Constraints on the optical precursor to the naked-eye burst GRB080319B from “Pi of the Sky” observations

Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Hoża 69, 00-681 Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: lewhoo@fuw.edu.pl

Received: 15 December 2011
Accepted: 7 February 2012

Abstract

I present the results of the search for an optical precursor to the naked-eye burst – GRB080319B, which reached 5.87^m optical peak luminosity in the “Pi of the Sky” data. A burst of such a high brightness could have been preceded by an optical precursor luminous enough to be in detection range of our experiment. The “Pi of the Sky” cameras observed the coordinates of the GRB for about 20 min prior to the explosion, thus provided crucial data for the precursor search. No signal within 3σ limit was found. A limit of 12^m (V-band equivalent) was set based on the data combined from two cameras, the most robust limit to my knowledge for this precursor.