TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  2198
SUBJECT: GRB030329: RTT150 optical observations and upper limit for a host
DATE:    03/05/03 14:59:53 GMT
FROM:    Irek Khamitov at TUG  <irekk@tug.tug.tubitak.gov.tr>

I. Khamitov (TUG), I.Bikmaev (KSU), M.Parmaksizoglu (TUG);
N. Sakhibullin, V. Suleymanov (KSU);
R. Burenin, R. Sunyaev, D. Denissenko, M. Pavlinsky, O. Terekhov, A.
Tkachenko, M.Gilfanov (IKI);
Z. Aslan, O.Golbasi (TUG);
U. Kiziloglu, A. Alpar, A. Baykal (METU);

report:

We continue observations of the GRB 030329 optical afterglow (Peterson
and Price, GCN 1985) with the 1.5-m Russian-Turkish Telescope RTT150
at TUG.

A set of 18 exposures by 5 min. duration each  with Rc Bessell filter has 
been obtained on the night May 02/03, 2003, under good photometric 
conditions and average seeing of 1.3 arcsec.  A new TE Andor CCD with 
Marcony back-illuminated 2048 x 2048 chip was used as the detector with 
the working chip temperature -60 C. We grouped exposures by 3 frames and
results of Rc photometry relative to the stars from Henden (GCN 2082)
are given in the Table below. We integrated all exposures and made PSF
subtraction from the OT's star-like structure to find the presence of
the host galaxy. No object brighter than R ~ 23.5 mag was found at the
position of the afterglow. A faint extended detail is seen at 1 arcsec
west side of OT position on the residual image at the brightness level 
of limiting magnitude. The limiting magnitude is defined by fringe
structures.

We  confirm the presence of two bright enough sources O1 and O2
at the 7 and 9 arcsec distances from OT indicated by S.Zharikov et al
(GCN 2171) and estimated their magnitudes as R = 22.1 and 22.4
correspondingly.

Table of Rc photometry
  UT        R    Rerr
May 2.774 20.51 0.07
May 2.786 20.65 0.07
May 2.800 20.34 0.06
May 2.813 20.62 0.08
May 2.826 20.63 0.07
May 2.838 20.61 0.07

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