TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 1107 SUBJECT: GRB 010921: The afterglow of HETE #1761 DATE: 01/10/19 16:34:55 GMT FROM: Paul Price at RSAA, ANU at CIT P. A. Price, E. Berger, D. W. Fox, D. A. Frail, S. R. Kulkarni, J. S. Bloom, R. S. Burrus, S. G. Djorgovski, M. Haynes, and A. Mahabal report on behalf of the Caltech-NRAO-CARA GRB collaboration: Following our observations of 2001 Sep 22.14 UT (t_GRB + 22 hr; GCN #1099), we re-observed the error box of GRB 010921 (HETE trigger #1761) with the Large Format Camera (LFC) on the Palomar 200-inch telescope on 2001 Sep 27.35 UT. Both observations covered the entire 250 square arcminute error box (GCN ##1096, 1097) with three pointings in Sloan r'. In preliminary reduction of the images, we identified a number of variable sources, and so further observations were made of the error box on 2001 Oct 17.15 UT with LFC. We now identify one source within the error box that exhibited a power-law decay, with index alpha ~ 1.6, superposed on a bright (R ~ 21.7 mag) galaxy. The coordinates of this source are RA: 22:55:59.9, Dec: +40:55:53 (J2000) with an estimated error of 0.6 arcseconds. Radio observations made with the VLA on 2001 Oct 17.15 reveal a radio source at the location of the optical transient with a nu^1/3 spectrum between 4.86 and 22.5 GHz, as has been seen in previous GRB afterglows. At the above coordinates, we also find a source detected with the USNOFS 1.0-m telescope (GCN #1100), which when corrected for Galactic extinction has a ~ nu^-2.3 spectrum over BVRI, possibly indicating extinction in the source frame. While all properties of this transient source appear to be consistent with those of a GRB afterglow, we can not with this information completely exclude the possibility that this object is a low luminosity AGN. Nevertheless, we believe that this object is most likely the afterglow of GRB 010921, detected and localised by HETE. This message may be cited.