TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 18499 SUBJECT: GRB 151027B: Swift detection of its 1000-th burst DATE: 15/10/27 22:56:57 GMT FROM: Scott Barthelmy at NASA/GSFC T. N. Ukwatta (LANL), S. D. Barthelmy (GSFC), W. H. Baumgartner (GSFC/UMBC), A. D'Ai (INAF-IASFPA), N. Gehrels (NASA/GSFC), J. A. Kennea (PSU), N. P. M. Kuin (UCL-MSSL), A. Y. Lien (GSFC/UMBC), F. E. Marshall (NASA/GSFC), A. Maselli (INAF-IASFPA), K. L. Page (U Leicester), D. M. Palmer (LANL), B. Sbarufatti (INAF-OAB/PSU) and R. L. C. Starling (U Leicester) report on behalf of the Swift Team: At 22:40:40 UT, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) triggered and located GRB 151027B (trigger=661869). Swift slewed immediately to the burst. The BAT on-board calculated location is RA, Dec 76.238, -6.427, which is RA(J2000) = 05h 04m 57s Dec(J2000) = -06d 25' 35" with an uncertainty of 3 arcmin (radius, 90% containment, including systematic uncertainty). The BAT light curve shows a peak with a duration of about 50 sec. The peak count rate was ~1000 counts/sec (15-350 keV), at ~40 sec after the trigger. The XRT began observing the field at 22:44:04.0 UT, 203.4 seconds after the BAT trigger. Using promptly downlinked data we find a bright, uncatalogued X-ray source located at RA, Dec 76.21944, -6.45010 which is equivalent to: RA(J2000) = 05h 04m 52.67s Dec(J2000) = -06d 27' 00.4" with an uncertainty of 3.9 arcseconds (radius, 90% containment). This location is 106 arcseconds from the BAT onboard position, within the BAT error circle. This position may be improved as more data are received; the latest position is available at http://www.swift.ac.uk/sper. We cannot determine whether the source is fading at the present time. A power-law fit to a spectrum formed from promptly downlinked event data gives a column density consistent with the Galactic value of 9.43 x 10^20 cm^-2 (Willingale et al. 2013). The initial flux in the 2.5 s image was 5.37e-10 erg cm^-2 s^-1 (0.2-10 keV). UVOT took a finding chart exposure of 150 seconds with the White filter starting 209 seconds after the BAT trigger. No credible afterglow candidate has been found in the initial data products. The 2.7'x2.7' sub-image covers 100% of the XRT error circle. The typical 3-sigma upper limit has been about 19.6 mag. The 8'x8' region for the list of sources generated on-board covers 100% of the XRT error circle. The list of sources is typically complete to about 18 mag. No correction has been made for the expected extinction corresponding to E(B-V) of 0.25. Burst Advocate for this burst is T. N. Ukwatta (tilan.ukwatta AT gmail.com). Please contact the BA by email if you require additional information regarding Swift followup of this burst. In extremely urgent cases, after trying the Burst Advocate, you can contact the Swift PI by phone (see Swift TOO web site for information: http://www.swift.psu.edu/too.html.)