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TwitterA&A 373, 796-804 (2001)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20010531
The optical afterglow and host galaxy of GRB 000926
J. U. Fynbo1, J. Gorosabel2, T. H. Dall3, 4, J. Hjorth5, H. Pedersen5, M. I. Andersen6, P. Møller1, S. Holland7, I. Smail8, N. Kobayashi9, E. Rol10, P. Vreeswijk10, I. Burud11, B. L. Jensen5, B. Thomsen4, A. Henden12, F. Vrba12, B. Canzian12, J. M. Castro Cerón13, A. J. Castro-Tirado14, 15, T. Cline16, M. Goto10, J. Greiner17, M. T. Hanski18, K. Hurley19, N. Lund2, T. Pursimo18, R. Østensen20, J. Solheim20, N. Tanvir21 and H. Terada221 European Southern Observatory Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
2 Danish Space Research Institute, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
3 Nordic Optical Telescope, Apartado Postal 474, 38700 Santa Cruz de La Palma, Spain
4 Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University of Århus, 8000 Århus C, Denmark
5 Astronomical Observatory, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
6 Division of Astronomy, PO Box 3000, 90014 University of Oulu, Finland
7 Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5670, USA
8 Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
9 SUBARU Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, 650 North A'ohoku Place Hilo, Hawaii 96720, USA
10 University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 403, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
11 Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique, Université de Liège, Avenue de Cointe 5, 4000 Liège, Belgium
12 Universities Space Research Association U.S. Naval Observatory, Flagstaff Station, Flagstaff, AZ 86002-1149, USA
13 Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada, Sección de Astronomía, 11110 San Fernando-Naval, Cádiz, Spain
14 Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), PO Box 03004, 18080 Granada, Spain
15 Laboratorio de Astrofísica Espacial y Física Fundamental (LAEFF-INTA), PO Box 50727, 28080, Madrid, Spain
16 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 661, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
17 Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
18 Tuorla Observatory, University of Turku, 21500 Piikkiö, Finland
19 University of California, Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720-7450, USA
20 Department of Physics, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway
21 Department of Physical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts AL10 9AB, UK
22 Department of Physics, Kyoto University, Kitashirakawa Oiwake-cho, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
(Received 9 February 2001 / Accepted 6 April 2001 )
Abstract
We present the discovery of the Optical Transient (OT) of the
long-duration gamma-ray burst GRB 000926. The optical
transient was detected independently with the Nordic Optical
Telescope and at Calar Alto 22.2 hours after the burst. At this
time the magnitude of the transient was R = 19.36. The
transient faded with a decay slope of about 1.7 during the first two
days after which the slope increased abruptly (within a few hours)
to about 2.4. The light-curve started to
flatten off after about a week indicating the presence of an
underlying extended object. This object was detected in a deep image
obtained one month after the GRB at
and
consists of several compact knots within about
5 arcsec. One of the knots is spatially coincident with
the position of the OT and hence most likely belongs to the
host galaxy. Higher resolution imaging is needed to
resolve whether all the compact knots belong to the host
galaxy or to several independent objects. In a separate paper we
present a discussion of the optical spectrum of the OT, and its
inferred redshift (Møller et al., in prep.).
Key words: cosmology: observations -- gamma rays: bursts
Offprint request: J. U. Fynbo, jfynbo@eso.org
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