TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  2957
SUBJECT: GRB 050117, I-band observations
DATE:    05/01/17 21:39:08 GMT
FROM:    Alberto Castro-Tirado at Inst.de Astro. de Andalucia  <ajct@iaa.es>

A. de Ugarte Postigo, A. Sota, M. Jelínek,  J. Gorosabel,
A. J. Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIC, Granada) and J. M. Castro 
Cerón (U. Copenhagen)

report:

The refined SWIFT/XRT error box (Hill et al. GCN 2955) 
for GRB 050117 (Sakamoto et al. GCN 2952) has been 
observed with the 1.5 m telescope at the Observatorio 
de Sierra Nevada in Granada, southern Spain. I-band 
(6 x 300 s) images were acquired starting on 17 Jan, 
18:30 UT (i.e. about 5.6 hr after the GRB trigger). 
No new sources within the error box are found when 
comparing with the DSS-2 plates down to I = 20.5 . 
Near-IR images -specially in the K-band- would be 
required in order to indentify the afterglow at these 
wavelengths, as there is severe extinction in the line 
of sight (A_I = 3.40; A_K = 0.65). This has been also 
pointed out by Torii (GCN 2956).

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