TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 7737 SUBJECT: GRB 080516: Swift-XRT Team refined analysis DATE: 08/05/16 11:08:12 GMT FROM: Kim Page at U.of Leicester K.L. Page (U. Leicester) and S.T. Holland (CRESST/USRA/GSFC) report on behalf of the Swift-XRT team: We have analysed the first five orbits of data obtained for GRB 080516 (Holland et al., GCN Circ. 7733), covering 11.5 ks of Photon Counting (PC) mode data. The UVOT-enhanced XRT position was given by Beardmore et al. in GCN Circ. 7735. The light-curve begins relatively flat, with a decay of alpha ~ 0.36 +/- 0.17, until around 4800 seconds after the trigger, at which point the slope steepens to 1.04 +0.20/-0.18. The first five orbits of PC data can be modelled with an absorbed power-law, with Gamma = 2.7 +/- 0.4 and total NH = (1.3 +/- 0.3)x10^22 cm^-2, considerably in excess of the Galactic value of 3.22x10^21 cm^-2. Using the relation in Grupe et al. (2007, ApJ, 133, 2216), this implies an estimated upper limit on the redshift of the burst of z<1.0. There is no evidence for spectral evolution across the temporal break. The observed (unabsorbed) flux over this time interval (90-2.5x10^4 s after the trigger) is 2.38x10^-12 (1.06x10^-11) erg cm^-2 s^-1. The counts to observed flux conversion is 5.8x10^-11 erg cm^-2 count^-1. If the light-curve continues to decay at alpha ~ 1.04, the count rate at 24 hours is predicted to be 3.7x10^-3 count s^-1, corresponding to an observed flux of 2.1x10^-13 erg cm^-2 s^-1. This is an official product of the Swift-XRT team.