TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 1578 SUBJECT: GRB 021004: Optical Observations DATE: 02/10/05 12:08:24 GMT FROM: Jules Halpern at Columbia U. <jules@astro.columbia.edu> J. P. Halpern, E. K. Armstrong, C. C. Espaillat (Columbia), J. Kemp (Joint Astronomy Centre and Columbia) report for the MDM GRB follow-up team: "We observed the optical afterglow (Fox, GCN #1564) of GRB 021004 with the MDM 1.3m in BVRI. On 2002 Oct 5 UT, we measure the following preliminary magnitudes: -------------------- UT R +/- -------------------- 03:02 19.06 0.06 03:36 19.17 0.05 04:26 19.24 0.03 04:51 19.30 0.04 05:15 19.30 0.03 05:39 19.25 0.03 06:10 19.33 0.03 06:34 19.30 0.04 06:56 19.32 0.03 07:19 19.42 0.03 07:42 19.31 0.03 08:05 19.31 0.03 08:28 19.31 0.03 08:50 19.27 0.03 09:13 19.29 0.03 09:41 19.34 0.03 10:03 19.34 0.03 10:41 19.41 0.03 11:04 19.39 0.03 11:26 19.41 0.04 11:50 19.39 0.04 -------------------- We employed the Weidinger et al. (GCN #1573) revised calibration star. These measurements are consistent with and extend the steepening light curve that they saw. The combined NOT and MDM points indicate a decay slope alpha = 1.16 +/- 0.07, but there are possible fluctuations of the type referred to by Winn et al. (GCN #1576) in our data that are contemporaneous with theirs. An updated decay curve is available at: http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~jules/021004.ps An equal number of images in each of B, V, and I were obtained, and will be analyzed subsequently."