GCN Circular 8195
Subject
GRB 080905A: optical afterglow
Date
2008-09-07T10:35:30Z (16 years ago)
From
Daniele Malesani at Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Inst <malesani@astro.ku.dk>
A. de Ugarte Postigo (ESO), D. Malesani (DARK/NBI), A. J. Levan (Univ.
Warwick), J. Hjorth (DARK/NBI), N. R. Tanvir (Univ. Leicester), report
on behalf of a larger collaboration:
We observed again the field of the short GRB 080905A (Pagani et al., GCN
8180) with the ESO VLT equipped with FORS2. R-band observations were
carried out starting on 2008 Sep 7.004 UT (1.50 days after the GRB) and
the total exposure time was 40 minutes.
The object located inside the XRT error circle visible in our early VLT
images (Malesani et al., GCN 8190) has clearly faded between the two
observations, and is thus likely the optical afterglow of GRB 080905A.
We note that this object is located outside the revised 2.2"-radius
(90%) UVOT-enhanced XRT error circle (distance from center 4.6"), as
provided at http://www.swift.ac.uk/xrt_positions/index.php (value of Sep
7.4 UT).
In our second epoch image, which is deeper and has a better seeing
(~0.9"), we also note the presence of a bright extended object, possibly
a spiral galaxy, about 9" S, 3" E of the afterglow (partially covered by
foreground stars).
Finding charts can be found at
http://www.astro.ku.dk/~malesani/GRB/080905A/#epoch2
We acknowledge significant support from the ESO observing staff at
Paranal, in particular Elena Mason, Andres Pino and Swetlana Hubrig.