TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  7645
SUBJECT: GRB960202B - on the association with SN 1996cr
DATE:    08/04/28 07:29:59 GMT
FROM:    Eran Ofek at Tel Aviv U.  <eran@wise1.tau.ac.il>

Eran. O. Ofek (Caltech), Avishay Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute for
Science), and Franz Bauer (Columbia) report:

Recently, Bauer et al. (2008; astro-ph/0804.3597)
suggested that the type IIn SN 1996cr in the Circinus galaxy
is associated with GRB 960202B (triggered at 14:05:51).
This suggestion is based on the coincidence of the BATSE error circle
with the SN position, as well as a rough consistency of
the GRB trigger with the inferred explosion time of the SN
(1995-02-28 to 1996-03-16).

This GRB is listed in the Inter-Planetary Network
database (Laros et al. 1997; Hurley et al. 1999).
Inspection of its positional constraints reveals that
SN1996cr is not consistent with the position of this GRB,
and the SN is located 1.38 deg outside the perimeter of the
3-sigma IPN annulus.

We note that the IPN positions were used to calibrate
the BATSE positional errors (Briggs et al. 1999).

We thank Kevin Hurley for maintaining the IPN database.