TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  1720
SUBJECT: GRB 021201: BOOTES simultaneous optical observations
DATE:    02/12/03 10:19:29 GMT
FROM:    Alberto Castro-Tirado at Inst.de Astro. de Andalucia  <ajct@iaa.es>

A. J. Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIC and LAEFF-INTA),
A. de Ugarte Postigo, T. J. Mateo Sanguino (CEDEA-INTA),
 M. Jélinek, P. Kubánek, R. Hudec (ASU), S. Vitek,
P. Páta (CVUT) and J. Á. Berná  (Univ. de Alicante)
on behalf of the BOOTES team,

report:

"We have obtained several unfiltred exposures (45-s each)
under good metereological conditions covering the short/hard
GRB 021201  IPN error box (Hurley et al. GCN 1719). The
images covered the period  05:28:23 - 05:32:12 UT 1 Dec 2002
(i.e. between 1.68-minutes before the trigger and 2.12-minutes
after the trigger) with the very wide-field  camera of BOOTES-1
(http://www.laeff.esa.es/BOOTES).

After a visual inspection of the IPN error box (Hurley et al.,
GCN 1719)  in all frames, we do not find evidence of optical
emission, in particular  simultaneously to the burst itself, for
which we have an image covering  the time interval 05:29:55
- 05:30:40 UT. Therefore we derive an upper  limit  of R = 10
for any  optical counterpart simultaneous to this short/hard
GRB.

To our knowledge, this is the second short/hard GRB for which
simultaneous images are available, following GRB 020531
(Castro-Tirado et al. 2002, GCN 1430). See also Castro-Tirado
et al. 2002(A&A 393, L55) regarding this issue."


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