Gamma-ray Burst 000126

On January 26, 2000, 23:26:29 UT BATSE detected a GRB (trigger 7971). BACODINE/GCN locations were not issued because the trigger began in a real-time telemetry gap. The GRB was localized by the IPN.

(All information courtesy of the instrument teams.)

Previous IAU Circulars

• none

• GCN notice #525
  K. Hurley, on behalf of the Ulysses GRB team, and T. Cline and E. Mazets, on behalf of the Konus-Wind and NEAR GRB teams, report:
  Ulysses, Konus, and NEAR detected a ~100 s long GRB, whose 25-100 keV fluence was ~10^-5 erg/cm^2, at 84402 s UT on January 26, 2000. The burst can only be localized at present to two alternate error boxes, each ~55 sq. arcmin. in area, whose corners are at:

      RA(2000)                 DEC(2000)
    6 h 35 m 44.61 s     -8 o 43 '  10.60 "
    6 h 36 m 31.96 s     -8 o 29 '  26.94 "
    6 h 36 m 19.35 s     -8 o 37 '  49.17 "
    6 h 37 m  7.39 s     -8 o 23 '  55.09 "
  
                OR  
      RA(2000)                 DEC(2000)
    7 h 45 m 40.70 s      7 o 53 '  53.12 "
    7 h 44 m 42.48 s      7 o 43 '   2.86 "
    7 h 45 m 16.97 s      7 o 45 '  38.87 "
    7 h 44 m 18.05 s      7 o 34 '  38.23 "
  

  These error boxes can be refined, and there is a slight possibility that further analysis will make it possible to eliminate one of them.
• GCN notice #526
  R. M. Kippen (UAH/MSFC) reports on behalf of the BATSE GRB Team:
  GRB000126 was detected by BATSE as trigger #7971 at 84389.625 s UT on 2000 January 26. BACODINE/GCN locations were not issued because the trigger began in a real-time telemetry gap. The burst emission consists of several pulses lasting more than 70 s. The preliminary BATSE location is (R.A., Dec. J2000) = (116.7, 6.9 deg), with a total (statistical+systematic) error radius of 2.4 deg (68% Conf.). This location rules out one of the two possible IPN error boxes (GCN 525), which means that the most probable IPN error-box is:

      RA(2000)                 DEC(2000)
    7 h 45 m 40.70 s      7 o 53 '  53.12 "
    7 h 44 m 42.48 s      7 o 43 '   2.86 "
    7 h 45 m 16.97 s      7 o 45 '  38.87 "
    7 h 44 m 18.05 s      7 o 34 '  38.23 "
  

  This box is within about 0.8 deg of the independent BATSE location.
• GCN notice #527
  T.S. Axelrod, B.P. Schmidt (Mt. Stromlo Observatory), J.S. Bloom, A. Diercks, and T.J. Galama (Caltech) report on behalf of the REACT GRB follow-up network:
  We have observed the error region of GRB000126, detected by the IPN (Hurley et al, GCN #525) and refined by BATSE (Kippen, GCN #526) with the Mt. Stromlo Observatory 50-inch telescope + MACHO camera system Jan 29 and Jan 30 UT, 60 and 80 hours after the event respectively.
  Two sets of 3x300s exposures were taken with mean epochs of observation of Jan 29.476 UT and Jan 30.540 UT. Comparison of the MACHO_Red images (~ Cousins R-band) via difference imaging reveals that no objects with 19.3 > R > 13.0 varied by more than the flux equivalent point-source of R = 19.0 between the two epochs. Unfortunately, the detection limit in each epoch varied from R ~ 19.3 - 20.0 due to cloudy conditions.
• GCN notice #528
  Alberto Castro-Tirado, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and IAA-CSIC (Granada), Rene Hudec and Jan Soldan, ASU (Ondrejov), Petr Pata and Martin Bernas, CVUT-FEL (Prague), Jose Maria Castro-Ceron, ROA (San Fernando), Javier Gorosabel, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and DSRI (Copenhagen), on behalf of the BOOTES-1 Collaboration, and Kevin Hurley, SSL (Berkeley) report:
  We have obtained several images of the IPN error box for GRB 000126 (Hurley et al. GCN 525, Kippen et al. GCN 526) with the wide-field CCD of BOOTES-1 on Jan 27.89 UT (22-h after the GRB, 5-min exposure time) and with the narrow-field CCD attached to the 0.3-m telescope on Jan 28.89 UT (46-h after the event, 10-min exposure time). Limiting magnitudes of the unfiltered images are about 11 and 19 respectively. None of them reveals any new (or strongly variable source) when comparing with the Digital Sky Survey, in agreement with the results obtained by Axelrod et al. (GCN 527). The two images are posted at http://www.laeff.esa.es/~ajct/GRBs/GRB000126.
• GCN notice #533
  K. Kjernsmo, A. Jaunsen and OE. Saanum (U. of Oslo), B.L. Jensen, J. Hjorth, H. Pedersen (U. of Copenhagen), J. Gorosabel (DSRI, Copenhagen) report:
  We have obtained a 300s R-band image of the central third of the IPN/BATSE errorbox of GRB 000126 (Hurley et al. GCN #525, Kippen GCN #526) on 2000 Jan 28.14 UT with the 2.5m Nordic Optical Telescope. From comparison with DSS-I, we found no obvious optical GRB counterparts in this part of the errorbox down to the limit of DSS (R~19.5). The NOT image has a seeing of 1.9" and a limiting magnitude of 22.2 (4 sigma).