TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 7456 SUBJECT: GRB 080319B: Hobby-Eberly Telescope Spectroscopy DATE: 08/03/19 17:58:58 GMT FROM: Antonino Cucchiara at PSU A. Cucchiara & D. B. Fox (PSU) report on behalf of a larger collaboration: "Starting on 2008 March 18.49 UT we used the Marcario LRS spectrograph on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (R ~ 230 ) to obtain one 1200s spectra of the optical afterglow (Holland et al., GCN 7428) of GRB 080319B (Racusin et al., GCN 7427). The spectrum covers the wavelength range 4100 to 10,500 Angstrom. We observe multiple metal absorption features including the MgII doublet (2796, 2803 A) and MgI (2852 A) at z ~ 0.937. We also detect lines at z ~ 0.760 (MnII 2576, MnII 2594 and CaI 4227), z ~ 0.715 (MgII doublet) and z ~ 0.530 (NaI 5890,5896). Our observations are consistent with the redshift and features reported by Vreeswijk et al. (GCN 7444, 7451)." [GCN OPS NOTE(19mar08): Per author's request, the date in the Subject-line was changed from "080519B" to "080319B". And the date in the first line was changd from "18.49" to 19.49".]