------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 1869 2003 Mar 30 17.20UT Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP,England.Telephone/FAX(01256)471074Int:+441256471074 INTERNET: GUY@TAHQ.DEMON.CO.UK GMH at AST.STAR.RL.AC.UK WORLD WIDE WEB http://www.theastronomer.org ------------------------------------------------------------------- GRB 030329 Arto Oksanen, Nyrola Observatory, R. Henriksson and M. Tuukkanen, Finnish Deep Sky section of Astronomical Association Ursa report on GCN 2010: 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 colour. 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. W. M. Wood-Vasey et. al., Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking project, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, have reported on GCN 1998 recent and historical upper limits for the optical transient for GRB 20030329 reported on TA E-Circular 1868. The latest, prior to outburst, was on 2003 Mar 23.17 when the object was not recorded to a limit of mag 21.6 at Palomar. A. Gal-Yam et. al., Wise observatory, report on GCN 1999 that the afterglow was recorded on March 29 at 17.15UT (5.6 hours after burst) at about R=14.3, B=15. They estimate the decline rate to be about 0.3 mag/hour in the R-band, from the first two hours of data. Berto Monard, Bronberg Observatory, Pretoria, South Africa reports: The reported bright optical transient of GRB 20030329 was monitored over a duration of more than 6.5 hours continuously with 60 sec imaging cycles. Using differential photometry based on one Tycho II star just South of the field, the optical transient faded from 13.8CR to 14.7CR over the reported period of 2003 Mar 29 17 15UT - 23 37 UT. P. Martini (OCIW), P. Berlind, K. Z. Stanek (CfA) and P. Garnavich (Notre Dame) report on GCN 2012: We imaged the optical afterglow of GRB 030329 with the Magellan 6.5-m Clay telescope and LDSS2 imaging/spectrograph on March 30 UT 01:15 (13.6 hours after the burst). We also obtained imaging data with the FLWO 1.2-m telescope. The R-band magnitude is estimated to be 15.1 assuming star "A" is R=16.2 (see http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~kstanek/grb030329.ps). Thus the OT continues to be very bright. We should note that the several fairly bright objects closest to the OT are clearly resolved in our images and should not be used for relative photometry. "A" and "B" appear to be stellar at ~1.3'' seeing. EDITOR: It would seem from the above reports that this GRB has a very slow decay rate and may still be worth imaging tonight. No UK observations of March 29 have been received to date. TAHQ TELEPHONE British Telecom advise us that there has been an intermittent fault affecting outgoing and incoming calls for about 48 hours but this relates to a large area rather than the TAHQ telephone number. They are endeavouring to resolve the problem. Guy M Hurst