gamma-ray burst 021021

[Stupendous Man <richmond@a188-l009.rit.edu>]

  I've just received a notice about a gamma-ray burst
which might possibly be of interest to TASSians.  You can 
find the notice at 

      http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/gcn3/1649.gcn3

but the bottom line is:

> At 18:43:00.00 UTC (67380.00 s UT) on 21 Oct 2002, the HETE FREGATE
> and WXM instruments detected a faint, untriggered XRF.
> 
> Ground analysis of the WXM data for the burst produced a location,
> which was reported in a GCN Notice at 10:58:44 UT on 22 Oct 2002,
> about 16 hours after the burst.  The WXM localization SNR was 6.
> The WXM location can be expressed as a 90% confidence circle that
> is 20 arcminutes in radius and is centered at
> 
> RA = 00h 17m 23s, Dec = -01d 37' 00" (J2000).

  Now, the time of the burst corresponds to EDT Monday Oct 21 (yesterday)
at about 2:43 in the afternoon.  If anyone happened to be looking at the
equator last night (Monday night), he might have taken images
of the field containing this burst.  In fact, I was using the Mark IV
for a short time last night, until a bunch of stupid clouds got in
the way.  Unfortunately, I wasn't looking at the equator :-(

  But perhaps some other people happened to be looking at the 
equator last night.  If so, please reply to this list.  I (and lots
of other people, too) would be happy to help you look at your
images to see if any new object appears in them ...

                                 Michael Richmond