TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 114 SUBJECT: GRB 980613: Detection of the probable host galaxy DATE: 98/06/19 07:24:37 GMT FROM: George Djorgovski at Caltech/Palomar GRB 980613: Detection of the probable host galaxy S. G. Djorgovski, S. R. Kulkarni, S. C. Odewahn (Caltech), and H. Ebeling (IfA, Univ. of Hawaii), report on behalf of the Caltech GRB collaboration: Images of the field of GRB 980613 were obtained bu H. Ebeling at the Keck-II telescope on UT 1998 June 16.3, in the R band. We detect a galaxy coincident to within 0.5 arcsec with the optical transient (OT) reported by Hjorth et al. (GCN circ. 109). The galaxy may include a faint, unresolved source, which may be the faded OT. The preliminary total magnitude of the object at the epoch of our observations, assuming the zero-point given by Hjorth et al. (R = 19.1 for their star 1, which is identical to star 2 of Diercks et al., GCN circ. 108), is R ~ 23.3, which is consistent with the conservative upper limits reported by Hjorth et al. for their June 17 image. We propose that this is the host galaxy of GRB 980613. Further analysis of these data is in progress. Images will be posted at: http://astro.caltech.edu/~george/grb/grb980613.html This message can be cited.