Gamma-ray Burst 041224

(All information courtesy of the instrument teams.)

Previous IAU Circulars

• none

• GCN notice #2908
  

  TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
  NUMBER:  2908
  SUBJECT: GRB041224: Swift-BAT detection of a soft burst
  DATE:    04/12/24 22:48:18 GMT
  FROM:    Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC  
  

  S. Barthelmy (GSFC), C. Markwardt (GSFC/UMD), T. Sakamoto (), L. Barbier, J. Cummings (GSFC), E. Fenimore (LANL), N. Gehrels (GSFC), D. Hullinger (GSFC/UMD), S. Hunsberger (PSU), H. Krimm (GSFC/USRA), K. McLean, D. Palmer (LANL), A. Parsons (GSFC), G. Sato (ISAS), M. Still (GSFC/USRA), M. Suzuki (Saitama), G. Tagliaferri (OAB) J. Tueller, on behalf of the Swift-BAT team:
  At 20:20:57 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and located on-board GRB041224. The spacecraft did not autonomously slew to the burst since automated slewing was not yet enabled.
  The BAT ground-calculated location is RA,Dec 56.200,-6.656 (J2000) with an uncertainty of 7 arcmin (radius, 3-sigma, including our preliminary bore sight alignment correction). This is 40 degrees off the BAT bore sight (33% partially encoded). The lightcurve is multi-peaked with a total duration of ~50 sec in the 15-350 keV band. The burst is soft with a power-law photon index of ~1.7-1.8.
• GCN notice #2911
  

  TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
  NUMBER:  2911
  SUBJECT: GRB 041224: near-infrared observations with REM
  DATE:    04/12/25 02:55:34 GMT
  FROM:    Daniele Malesani at SISSA-ISAS,Trieste,Italy  
  

  P. D'Avanzo, S. Covino, D. Malesani, F.M. Zerbi, G. Chincarini, G. Tagliaferri, E. Molinari, V. Testa, G. Tosti, A. Monfardini, A. Di Paola, M. Rodono', L.A. Antonelli, P. Conconi, G. Cutispoto, L. Nicastro, E. Palazzi, on behalf of the REM/ROSS team, report:
  We imaged the field of GRB041224 (Barthelmy et al., GCN 2908) with the 60cm REM robotic telescope located in La Silla (Chile). Observations were carried out in the J, H and K filters, while the bright and close Moon (<40 deg away) prevented observations in the optical. Only the central 10'x10' region of BAT error circle was imaged (approximately 60%), under good seeing conditions (1"), starting on 2004 Dec 25, at 1:06 UT, and ending at 1:39 UT (approximately 5 hours after the burst).
  Visual inspection of the NIR frames didn't reveal any new object when compared with the 2MASS catalog. Our frames are deeper than this survey, therefore further observations are in progress to search for variable sources.
  This message can be cited.
• GCN notice #2912
  

  TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
  NUMBER:  2912
  SUBJECT: GRB041224: ROTSE-III Optical Observations
  DATE:    04/12/25 03:32:43 GMT
  FROM:    Eli Rykoff at Univ. of Michigan/ROTSE  
  

  E. Rykoff, T. McKay, H. Swan (U. Michigan) report on behalf of the ROTSE collaboration:
  ROTSE-IIIc, located at the H.E.S.S. sit at Mt. Gamsberg, Namibia, responded to Swift GRB041224 (GCN#2908). A manual response was initiated at 23:20:41 UT, 3 hours after the burst. We took 10 5-s exposures followed by 250 20-s exposures. All the images were taken with >95% moon illumination. The unfiltered images were calibrated relative to USNO A2.0. Individual images have limiting magnitudes around 17.2. Comparison to DSS (second epoch) reveals no new sources within the 3-sigma error circle to a limiting magnitude of 18.5 for stacks of 10 images taken during the first hour of observation.
• GCN notice #2961
  A. J. Castro-Tirado, M. Jel=EDnek, A. de Ugarte Postigo, (IAA-CSIC Granada), S. Vitek (Czech Technical University,=20 Prague), P. Kubanek (Astronomical Institute of the Academy=20 of Sciences, Ondrejov), T. J. Mateo Sanguino (Universidad=20 de Huelva), J. M. Castro Cer=F3n (U. Copenhagen), T. Soria=20 (EELM-CSIC, M=E1laga) and J. Fabregat (Universidad de Valencia)
  report: The BOOTES-2 very wide field camera, located at the Estaci=F3n Experimental de La Mayora (EELM-CSIC) in M=E1laga, observed=20 the two regions of the sky containing the SWIFT/BAT error=20 boxes for GRB 041224 (Barthelmy et al. GCN 2908) and GRB=20 041226 (Krimm et al. GCN 2914) as part of its routine=20 observing schedule. For GRB 041224 a 30 s exposure started=20 at 20:21:00 UT (3 s after the onset of the 50 s long burst),=20 with the following frame starting at 20:22:00 UT. For GRB 041226 the 30 s exposure started at 20:34:00 (19 s prior to=20 the onset of the 20 s main emission peak). Limiting (unfiltered)=20 magnitudes of 8.5 and 7.0 respectively (due to the presence=20 of the full moon) are derived for any promt optical flash arising from either of these two events.
  This message can be quoted.