TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 15451 SUBJECT: GRB 131103A: VLT/X-shooter redshift DATE: 13/11/05 10:08:47 GMT FROM: Dong Xu at DARK/NBI D. Xu, D. Malesani (DARK/NBI), S. Schulze (PUC, MCSS), A. de Ugarte Postigo (IAA-CSIC, DARK/NBI), P. Jakobsson, Z. Cano(U Iceland), N. R. Tanvir (U. Leicester), J. P. U. Fynbo, D. Watson (DARK/NBI), P. Goldoni (APC, CEA/Irfu), S. Vergani (CNRS/GEPI), R. Wijers (U Amsterdam) report on behalf of the X-shooter GRB collaboration: We have obtained further observations of the afterglow of GRB 131103A (Cummings et al., GCN Circ. 15440; Cano et al., GCN 15445) using the ESO VLT equipped with the X-shooter spectrograph, covering the wavelength range 3000-20000 AA. The spectrum was secured on Nov. 5.2 with a total exposure time of 4x600 s. We detect a rich emission line spectrum from the underlying host galaxy at a common redshift z = 0.5955. We also detect strong absorption lines from FeII and MgII at the same redshift in the blue part of the spectrum implying that there is significant afterglow light superimposed on the host light. We acknowledge excellent support from the observing staff at Paranal, in particular Dimitri Gadotti, Roger Wesson, and Claudia Reyes. [GCN OPS NOTE(05nov13): Per author's request, the typo in the redshift value was changed from 0.599 to 0.5955.]