GRB 991208

Discovery of the optical afterglow

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TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  531
SUBJECT: GRB 991208, radio observations
DATE:    00/02/03 09:02:38 GMT
FROM:    Javier Gorosabel at LAEFF-INTA, Madrid  <jgu@laeff.esa.es>

C.   Garcia-Miro  (LAEFF-INTA,   Madrid  and   IAA-CSIC, Granada),  J.
Gorosabel  (DSRI,  Copenhagen),  J.   Calvo  (INSA, Madrid)  and  A.J.
Castro-Tirado (LAEFF-INTA, Madrid and IAA-CSIC, Granada) report:

We scanned  at 8.42-GHz  the  position of the  afterglow reported  for
GRB 991208 (GCN 451) with  the 70-m radio-telescope  of the Madrid Deep
Space Communication Center  (MDSCC,  NASA-INTA) located at  Robledo de
Chavela, Madrid.   The observations were  based  on two observing runs
carried out on Dec 22.2491-22.6488 UT and Dec 23.3243-23.6095 UT 1999.
We derive a  1 sigma upper  limit for the flux  density of 3.5 mJy for
the afterglow. The authors wish  to thank the  MDSCC staff and the JPL
scheduler for their enthusiastic support.

This message may be cited.

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TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER: 452
SUBJECT: GRB 991208 optical observations
DATE: 99/12/11 13:27:36 GMT
FROM: Alberto Castro-Tirado at Inst.de Astrofisica de Andalucia
GRB 991208, optical observations --------------------------------------

Alberto Castro-Tirado, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and IAA-CSIC (Granada)
Javier Gorosabel, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and Univ of Amsterdam (UoA)
Jochen Greiner, AIP (Potsdam)
Holger Pedersen, KUO (Copenhagen)
Elena Pian, ITESRE (Bologna)
Paul Vreeswijk (UoA)
on behalf of a larger European Collaboration
Chris Blake and Jasper Wall (Univ. of Oxford)
Georg Feulner and Ulrich Hopp, Universitaets Sternwarte (Muenchen)
Nick Rattenbury (Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand)

Report:

"We have obtained several exposures of the IPN error box for GRB 991208 (Hurley et al. GCN 450) with the 2.5-m Isaac Newton telescope at La Palma and with the 2.2-m telescope at the German- Spanish Calar Alto Observatory. The images were taken on Dec 10.27 (I-band) and Dec 11.25 UT (R- and I-band filters). After a visual comparison with the Digital Sky Survey, a new source is clearly detected with R = 19.1 +/- 0.1 (Dec 11.27). Its position is AR(2000) = 16h 33m 53.51s, Dec(2000) = +46 27 21.5 (+/- 1"). We note that this object coincides with the radio source reported by Frail et al. (GCN 451) and therefore is the optical afterglow to GRB 991208. Further multiwavelength imaging and spectroscopy are encouraged".

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