A refined position catalog of the Swift XRT afterglows
Abstract
We present a catalogue of refined positions of 68 gamma ray burst (GRB) afterglows observed by the Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT) from the launch up to 2005 Oct 16. This is a result of the refinement of the XRT boresight calibration. We tested this correction by means of a systematic study of a large sample of X-ray sources observed by XRT with well established optical counterparts. We found that we can reduce the systematic error radius of the measurements by a factor of two, from 6.5" to 3.2" (90% of confidence). We corrected all the positions of the afterglows observed by XRT in the first 11 months of the Swift mission. This is particularly important for the 37 X-ray afterglows without optical counterpart. Optical follow-up of dark GRBs, in fact, will be more efficient with the use of the more accurate XRT positions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0511604,
title = {A refined position catalog of the Swift XRT afterglows},
author = {A. Moretti and M. Perri and M. Capalbi and L. Angelini and J. E. Hill and S. Campana and D. N. Burrows and J. P. Osborne and G. Tagliaferri and G. Cusumano and P. Giommi and P. Romano and T. Mineo and J. Kennea and D. Morris and J. Nousek and C. Pagani and J. Racusin and A. F. Abbey and A. P. Beardmore and O. Godet and M. R. Goad and K. L. Page and A. A. Wells and G. Chincarini},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0511604},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table ; accepted for publication in A&A Letters. The revised version contains updated positions