[vsnet-grb-info 16903] GRB 120729A: KAIT Optical Observations

[GCN Circulars]

TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  18184
SUBJECT: GRB 120729A: KAIT Optical Observations
DATE:    15/08/20 18:56:44 GMT
FROM:    Xiang-Gao Wang at GuangXi U  <wangxg at gxu.edu.cn>

Xianggao Wang (UC Berkeley, GXU, UNLV), WeiKang Zheng,
Alexei V. Filippenko (UC Berkeley), and S. Bradley Cenko
(GSFC) report on behalf of the KAIT GRB team:

The 0.76-m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT), located at
Lick Observatory, responded to Swift GRB 120729A (Ukwatta et al.,
GCN 13530) starting at 10:58:16 UT, 122 s after the burst.
Observations were performed with an automatic sequence in the
clear (roughly R), V, and I filters, and the exposure time was
20 s per image. The bright optical afterglow (Ukwatta et al. GCN 13530,
Virgili et al. GCN 13531, Oates et al. GCN 13539, Im et al. 13544,
Wren et al. 13545, Khamitov et al. GCN 13548, Gorosabel GCN 13550,
D'Avanzo et al. GCN 13551, Smith et al. GCN 13554) was detected
in all three filters. Useful observations lasted for about 2.4 hours.
Preliminary analysis shows that the afterglow decays with a single
power (with alpha = -0.87) beyond 1000 s after the burst. A light
curve is posted at
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~zwk/grb/GRB120729A/GRB120729A_kait.png .