TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 452 SUBJECT: GRB 991208 optical observations DATE: 99/12/11 13:27:36 GMT FROM: Alberto Castro-Tirado at Inst.de Astrofisica de Andalucia GRB 991208, optical observations -------------------------------------- Alberto Castro-Tirado, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and IAA-CSIC (Granada) Javier Gorosabel, LAEFF-INTA (Madrid) and Univ of Amsterdam (UoA) Jochen Greiner, AIP (Potsdam) Holger Pedersen, KUO (Copenhagen) Elena Pian, ITESRE (Bologna) Paul Vreeswijk (UoA) on behalf of a larger European Collaboration Chris Blake and Jasper Wall (Univ. of Oxford) Georg Feulner and Ulrich Hopp, Universitaets Sternwarte (Muenchen) Nick Rattenbury (Univ. of Auckland, New Zealand) report: "We have obtained several exposures of the IPN error box for GRB 991208 (Hurley et al. GCN 450) with the 2.5-m Isaac Newton telescope at La Palma and with the 2.2-m telescope at the German- Spanish Calar Alto Observatory. The images were taken on Dec 10.27 (I-band) and Dec 11.25 UT (R- and I-band filters). After a visual comparison with the Digital Sky Survey, a new source is clearly detected with R = 19.1 +/- 0.1 (Dec 11.27). Its position is AR(2000) = 16h 33m 53.51s, Dec(2000) = +46 27 21.5 (+/- 1"). We note that this object coincides with the radio source reported by Frail et al. (GCN 451) and therefore is the optical afterglow to GRB 991208. Further multiwavelength imaging and spectroscopy are encouraged. A finding chart will be posted at http://www.laeff.esa.es/~ajct/GRBs/GRB991208" This message is quotable.