A multi-colour study of the dark GRB 000210 host galaxy and its environment

A&A 400, 127-136 (2003)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20021907

A multi-colour study of the dark GRB 000210 host galaxy and its environment

J. Gorosabel^{1, 2, 3}, L. Christensen^{4, 5}, J. Hjorth⁴, J. U. Fynbo^{6, 4}, H. Pedersen⁴, B. L. Jensen⁴, M. I. Andersen⁵, N. Lund¹, A. O. Jaunsen⁷, J. M. Castro Cerón⁸, A. J. Castro-Tirado², A. Fruchter⁹, J. Greiner^{5, 10}, E. Pian¹¹, P. M. Vreeswijk⁷, I. Burud⁹, F. Frontera^{12, 13}, L. Kaper¹⁴, S. Klose¹⁵, C. Kouveliotou¹⁶, N. Masetti¹³, E. Palazzi¹³, J. Rhoads⁹, E. Rol¹⁴, I. Salamanca¹⁴, N. Tanvir¹⁷, R. A. M. J. Wijers¹⁴ and E. van den Heuvel¹⁴

¹ Danish Space Research Institute, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
    e-mail: nl@dsri.dk
² Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), PO Box 03004, 18080 Granada, Spain
    e-mail: [jgu, ajct]@iaa.es
³ Laboratorio de Astrofísica Espacial y Física Fundamental (LAEFF-INTA), PO Box 50727, 28080, Madrid, Spain
    e-mail: jgu@laeff.esa.es
⁴ Astronomical Observatory, University of Copenhagen, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
    e-mail: [lise, jens, holger, brian_j]@astro.ku.dk
⁵ Astrophysikalisches Institut, 14482 Potsdam, Germany
    e-mail: [lchristensen, mandersen, jgreiner]@aip.de
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Århus, Ny Munkegade, 8000 Århus C, Denmark
    e-mail: jfynbo@phys.au.dk
⁷ European Southern Observatory, Casilla 19001, Santiago 19, Chile
    e-mail: [ajaunsen, pvreeswi]@eso.org
⁸ Real Instituto y Observatorio de la Armada, Sección de Astronomía, 11.110 San Fernando-Naval (Cádiz), Spain
    e-mail: josemari@alumni.nd.edu
⁹ Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
    e-mail: [fruchter, burud, rhoads]@stsci.edu
¹⁰ Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, 85741 Garching, Germany
    e-mail: jcg@mpe.mpg.de
¹¹ Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Via G.B. Tiepolo 11, 34131, Trieste, Italy
    e-mail: pian@tesre.bo.cnr.it
¹² Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Ferrara, Via Paradiso 12, 44100 Ferrara, Italy
    e-mail: frontera@fe.infn.it
¹³ Istituto Tecnologie e Studio Radiazioni Extraterrestri, CNR, Via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
    e-mail: [filippo, masetti, eliana]@bo.iasf.cnr.it
¹⁴ University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 403, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    e-mail: [lexk, evert, isabel, rwijers, edvdh]@science.uva.nl
¹⁵ Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, 07778 Tautenburg, Germany
    e-mail: klose@tls-tautenburg.de
¹⁶ NASA MSFC, SD-50, Huntsville, AL 35812, USA
    e-mail: kouveliotou@eagles.msfc.nasa.gov
¹⁷ Department of Physical Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts AL10 9AB, UK
    e-mail: nrt@star.herts.ac.uk

(Received 13 November 2002 / Accepted 16 December 2002)

Abstract
We present UBVRIZJs HKs broad band photometry of the host galaxy of the dark gamma-ray burst (GRB) of February 10, 2000. These observations represent the most exhaustive photometry given to date of any GRB host galaxy. A grid of spectral templates have been fitted to the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of the host. The derived photometric redshift is z=0.842^+0.054_-0.042, which is in excellent agreement with the spectroscopic redshift ( $z=0.8463\pm 0.0002$ ) proposed by Piro et al. (2002) based on a single emission line. Furthermore, we have determined the photometric redshift of all the galaxies in an area of $6^{\prime} \times 6^{\prime}$ around the host galaxy, in order to check for their overdensity in the environment of the host. We find that the GRB 000210 host galaxy is a subluminous galaxy ( $L \sim 0.5 \pm 0.2 \ L^{\star}$ ), with no companions above our detection threshold of $0.18 \pm 0.06 \ L^{\star}$ . Based on the restframe ultraviolet flux a star formation rate of $2.1 \pm 0.2 \ M_{\odot}$ yr ^-1 is estimated. The best fit to the SED is obtained for a starburst template with an age of 0.181^+0.037_-0.026 Gyr and a very low extinction ( $A_{\rm V} \sim 0$ ). We discuss the implications of the inferred low value of $A_{\rm V}$ and the age of the dominant stellar population for the non-detection of the GRB 000210 optical afterglow.

Key words: gamma rays: bursts -- galaxies: fundamental parameters -- techniques: photometric

Offprint request: J. Gorosabel, jgu@dsri.dk

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