TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  21713
SUBJECT: LIGO/Virgo G299232: XRT Rank 2 source is not real
DATE:    17/08/26 11:49:24 GMT
FROM:    Phil Evans at U of Leicester  <pae9@leicester.ac.uk>

P. A. Evans (U. Leicester) reports on behalf of the Swift-XRT team:

Our automated analysis of the XRT follow up of G299232 recently reported an apparent Rank 2 source as a GCN Counterpart Notice.

Manual inspection of the images shows that the “source" lies in a region of extended diffuse emission, likely caused by partial illumatination of the CCD by scattered light from the bright Earth limb. We do not consider this source to be astrophysical in origin. The counterpart notices are preliminary, as they are generated entirely automatically.

This circular is an official product of the Swift team.