TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 7547 SUBJECT: GRB 080330: Redshift Confirmation from Hobby-Eberly Telescope Spectroscopy DATE: 08/03/30 15:21:39 GMT FROM: Antonino Cucchiara at PSU A. Cucchiara & D. B. Fox (PSU) report on behalf of a larger collaboration: "Starting on 2008 March 30.35 UT we used the Marcario LRS spectrograph on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (R ~ 230 ) to obtain 2 x 1000s spectra of the optical afterglow (Mao et al., GCN 7537) of GRB 080330. The spectrum covers the wavelength range 4100 to 10,500 Angstrom. We observe multiple metal absorption features including the MgII doublet (2796, 2803 A) and MgI (2852 A), FeII (2586, 2600 A), ZnII (2026 A) and NiII (1741,1751 A) at redshift z = 1.51. Our observations are consistent with the redshift and features reported by Malesani et al. (GCN 7544)."