Prompt Optical Observations of Gamma-ray Bursts
Abstract
The Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) seeks to measure simultaneous and early afterglow optical emission from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). A search for optical counterparts to six GRBs with localization errors of 1 square degree or better produced no detections. The earliest limiting sensitivity is m(ROTSE) > 13.1 at 10.85 seconds (5 second exposure) after the gamma-ray rise, and the best limit is m(ROTSE) > 16.0 at 62 minutes (897 second exposure). These are the most stringent limits obtained for GRB optical counterpart brightness in the first hour after the burst. Consideration of the gamma-ray fluence and peak flux for these bursts and for GRB990123 indicates that there is not a strong positive correlation between optical flux and gamma-ray emission.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0001438,
title = {Prompt Optical Observations of Gamma-ray Bursts},
author = {Carl Akerlof and Richard Balsano and Scott Barthelmy and Jeff Bloch and Paul Butterworth and Don Casperson and Tom Cline and Sandra Fletcher and Fillippo Frontera and Galen Gisler and John Heise and Jack Hills and Kevin Hurley and Robert Kehoe and Brian Lee and Stuart Marshall and Tim McKay and Andrew Pawl and Luigi Piro and John Szymanski and Jim Wren},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0001438},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJ Letters