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Dear Arto and interested readers,
Just for what it's worth, since it has been brought up.
I made visual observations of SN 1998bw, ie GRB 980425 at the time. It's in
one of the IAU Circulars from that time. Some wonder if that was a genuine GRB
or not...
Anyway these are exciting times we live in and GRB chasing has never been
more organised than now thanks to professional endeavours.
I am covering GRB 030329 for the second consecutive night, right from the
South, with a CCD system! Hopefully it will be another successfull run.
Regards,
Berto Monard
Bronberg Observatory / CBA Pretoria.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2003 12:39
PM
Subject: [AAVSO-GRB] GRB 030329: visual
observations
Dear All,
Please find my GCN GRB observation report
bellow. This is very probably the
first ever visual observation of a
gamma-ray burst optical afterglow!
When I received the first reports
of this very bright (R=12.4) and well
positioned (in Leo) optical transient
(OT) it was late afternoon in Finland.
But, of course, our sky was
completely clouded and the weather forecast
promised even more clouds with
possible rain or snow for the night. There
was still some possibility that
southern and western Finland would have
better conditions, so I alerted as
many variable star and Deep Sky observers
as possible to observe this very
rare event.
Two very experienced DS-observers, Markus Tuukkanen and
Riku Henriksson,
took their large mobile telescopes and went looking for
clear sky. Both
reported live on their mobile phones soon after dark,
around 20 UT, that
they were seeing the OT as a 14.3 magnitude stellar
object on their
eyepieces! The quickly worsening weather at both sites did
not allow long
observations so neither was able to see the OT fading. Also
no obvious fast
flickering or color was seen.
Both observers
made sketches of the GRB030329 field and the drawings are or
will be posted
to the Deep Sky Archive http://archive.ermiksson.net/.
I
would be very interested to know if anyone else has seen this (or
any
other) GRB afterglows visually. It should have been easy target
in
especially in the Far East when it was blazing at 13 magnitudes during
the
first hours.
Personally I was trying to observe the OT with a
CCD at Nyrola Observatory
from 19 to 24 UT. From the total of 148 images
only about 50 taken during
the periods of thinner clouds show the
afterglow. Image analysis is in
progress. And yes, it was snowing when I
closed the observatory!
best regards,
arto
--
Arto
Oksanen
mailto:arto.oksanen@jklsirius.fi
Jyvaskylan
Sirius ry, Kyllikinkatu 1, FIN-40100 Jyväskylä, Finland
Tel.
+358-14-4157852, Mobile: +358-40-5659438, Fax: +358-14-4157803
Nyrola
Observatory http://vsnet.ursa.fi/sirius/nytt/nytt_info.html
-----Original Message-----
TITLE: GCN GRB
OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER: 2010
SUBJECT: GRB 030329: visual
observations
DATE: 03/03/30 00:33:03
GMT
FROM: Arto Oksanen at Nyrola Obs., Finland <oksanen@nyrola.jklsirius.fi>
A.
Oksanen (Nyrola Observatory), R. Henriksson and M. Tuukkanen (the
Finnish
Deep Sky section of Astronomical Association Ursa)
report:
We observed the optical afterglow of GRB030329 reported by
Peterson and
Price (GCN 1985) visually about 8 hours after the burst.
M. Tuukkanen observed the OT In Pornainen, Finland with a 0.63 m
Newton
telescope for about one hour starting March 29, 2003 19:30 UT.
He reported it as a faint starlike object seen easily with direct vision.
He
did not see any flickering or distinct color.
R. Henriksson was
observing in Orivesi, Finland with his 0.30 m Newton
telescope using 200x
magnification at 20:05 UT. He reported the object
stellar and faint,
visible only with averted vision. His scanned sketch
with notes is
available on web:
http://archive.ermiksson.net/record.php?id=4112
Both
observers estimated the visual magnitude as 14.3 by using the
14.2
magnitude GSC 1434:322 star North of OT as reference.
This
message may be
cited.
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