Status Report

NASA Swift: GRB 060502B: Swift detection of a short burst

By SpaceRef Editor
May 9, 2006
Filed under , ,
NASA Swift: GRB 060502B: Swift detection of a short burst
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TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER: 5055
SUBJECT: GRB 060502B: Swift detection of a short burst
DATE: 06/05/02 18:08:11 GMT
FROM: Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC Scott@lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov

E. Troja (INAF-IASFPA), S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC), P. T. Boyd (NASA/GSFC), D. N. Burrows (PSU), J. R. Cummings (NASA/ORAU), N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC), S. T. Holland (GSFC/USRA), S. D. Hunsberger (PSU), J. A. Kennea (PSU), H. A. Krimm (GSFC/USRA), V. La Parola (INAF-IASFPA), V. Mangano (INAF-IASFPA), F. E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC), P. T. O’Brien (U Leicester), K. L. Page (U Leicester), D. M. Palmer (LANL), T. Sakamoto (NASA/ORAU), G. Tagliaferri (INAF-OAB) and D. E. Vanden Berk (PSU) report on behalf of the Swift Team:

At 17:24:41 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and located the short GRB 060502B (trigger=208275). Swift slewed immediately to the burst. The BAT on-board calculated location is RA,Dec 278.936, +52.632 {18h 35m 45s, +52d 37′ 56″} (J2000) with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including systematic uncertainty). The TDRSS BAT light curve shows a single spike with a FWHM of less than 128 msec. The peak count rate was ~10000 counts/sec (15-350 keV), at ~0 sec after the trigger.

The XRT began taking data at 17:25:51 UT, 70 seconds after the BAT trigger. The XRT on-board centroid algorithm did not find a source in the image, however analysis of downlinked data reveals a faint point source at the following coordinates: RA(J2000) = 18h 35m 45.9s, Dec(J2000) = 52d 37m 38.1s, with an estimated uncertainty of 10 arcseconds radius (90% containment). This position is 20 arcseconds from BAT localization. We note that the XRT position lies 2.5 arcseconds from an possible galaxy with R=18.5 in the APM-North catalogue (McMahon et al., 2000).

UVOT took a finding chart exposure of 100 seconds with the White (160-650 nm) filter starting 74.2 seconds after the BAT trigger. There is no detected new source in the rapidly available 2.7’x2.7′ sub-image, to a limiting White magnitude of about 19.1.

We are currently in the beginning of the Malindi downlink gap, so we will not have the full data set until at least 01:00 03/May/06 UT.

SpaceRef staff editor.