Gamma-ray Burst 140414A

(All information courtesy of the instrument teams.)

Previous IAU Circulars

• none

• GCN Circular #16110
  J. R. Cummings on behalf of the Swift-BAT team
  At 2014-04-14T06:06:29, IPN spacecraft triggered on GRB 140414A. The burst was about 0.7 seconds long, and appears to be in the SHB category. Swift was executing a pre-planned slew maneuver at this time. A mosaic image made from BAT event data collected during the slew shows a 12 sigma source at RA, Dec 195.310, +56.902, which is:

  RA (J2000) 13h 01m 14.3s
  Dec (J2000) 56d 54' 06"
  

  with an estimated uncertainty radius of 4 arcmin (90% containment)
  A Swift TOO request has been submitted to locate the afterglow with XRT.
• GCN Circular #16111
  J. R. Cummings on behalf of the Swift-BAT team
  We present refined analysis of the short-hard burst GRB 140414A (Cummings, GCN Circ. #16110). The best BAT position is still RA, Dec 195.310, +56.902, which is:

  RA (J2000) 13h 01m 14.3s 	
  Dec (J2000) 56d 54' 06"
  

  with an estimated uncertainty radius of 4 arcmin (90% containment).
  The light curve shows two main peaks each about 0.3 seconds long, the second about 3 times as intense and peaking about 0.3 seconds after the first. T90 is estimated as 0.7 +- 0.1 seconds.
  The spectrum is best fit by a simple powerlaw function with a photon index of 0.74 +- 0.18. The fluence in 0.7 seconds was (1.22 +- 0.10) x 10^-7 ergs/cm^2. Errors are 90% confidence.
  A Swift TOO request was approved to locate the afterglow with XRT, with the observation ID 20375. Unfortunately, the star tracker did not find enough targets to lock. Swift will not reobserve the target.
• GCN Circular #16112
  P. D'Avanzo, D. Fugazza (INAF/OAB) L. Di Fabrizio, G. Mainella (INAF/TNG) report on behalf of the CIBO collaboration:
  We observed the field of the short GRB 140414A (Cummings, GCN 16110) using the DOLORES camera on the 3.6-m TNG Telescope at Canary Islands.
  We obtained 30 minutes of imaging observations under seeing of ~ 2" with the r SDSS filter at a mean t-t0 of 15.2 hours. No object brighter than the SDSS limit is found inside the BAT error circle (Cummings, GCN 16111). The 3sigma limiting magnitude of the co-added image is r~22 (calibrated against SDSS stars).
  We thank the TNG visiting astronomer Luca Malavolta.
• GCN Circular #16113
  P. D'Avanzo, M. G. Bernardini, S. Campana (INAF-OAB) report on behalf of the Swift team:
  We have analysed 1.7 ks of XRT data for GRB 140414A (Cummings, GCN 16110), from 40.4 ks to 42.1 ks after the IPN trigger. The data are all in Photon Counting (PC) mode. As mentioned by Cummings (GCN 16111), too few stars were present in the field for the star tracker to lock. In light of this, the data were processed relaxing some constraints on the attitude file with respect to the standard procedure.
  No bright X-ray afterglow is detected inside the refined BAT error circle (Cummings, GCN 16111). The formal 3sigma upper limit is 2.3 x 10^-2 cts/s even if, given the non standard processing, it might result in a slightly higher limit.
• GCN Circular #16114
  F. E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC), L.M.Z. Hagen (PSU), and P. D'Avanzo (INAF-OAB) report on behalf of the Swift/UVOT team:
  The Swift/UVOT observed the field of GRB 140414A in the U, White, and V filters starting about 40 ks after the BAT trigger (Cummings GCN Circ. 16110). Because the star tracker failed to lock, stars are trailed in all the images, and the usual UVOT sensitivities are not achieved. No optical afterglow consistent with the BAT position is detected in the any of the UVOT exposures. The results for the most sensitive exposure is reported in the table below. The limiting magnitude is estimated from the list of detected stars.

  Filter         T_start(s)   T_stop(s)      Exp(s)         Mag
  
  white            40958        41502          536         >20
  

  The magnitude in the table is not corrected for the Galactic extinction due to the reddening of E(B-V) = 0.01 in the direction of the burst (Schlegel et al. 1998).