[vsnet-grb-info 2233] GRB 051008, optical observations

[GCN Circulars]

TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  4072
SUBJECT: GRB 051008, optical observations
DATE:    05/10/08 18:53:12 GMT
FROM:    Sylvio Klose at TLS Tautenburg  <klose at tls-tautenburg.de>

S. Klose and C. Hoegner, Thueringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg
report:

We observed the error circle of GRB 051008 with the Tautenburg
Schmidt telescope. I-band observations started 17:31 UT, i.e.
1 hr after the burst. R-band observations followed at 17:57 UT.

A first inspection of the images does not reveal an afterglow
candidate, neither in the R band nor in the I band down to the DSS2
red limit. A bright star in the field affects the observations a bit
but we exclude a bright afterglow as close as 20 arcsec to this star.

The bright afterglow candidate reported by Roming et al. (GCN 4070) is
visible on our images, of course. Even though, this source is also visible
on the DSS2-red so that its identification as the afterglow is not yet
obvious. We cannot exclude, however, that there was a bright object
very close to this star that faded away.