TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 7815 SUBJECT: GRB 080603B: Hobby-Eberly Telescope redshift confirmation DATE: 08/06/04 17:51:00 GMT FROM: Antonino Cucchiara at PSU A. Cucchiara and D. B. Fox (Penn State) report: "Starting on 2008 June 4.13 UT we used the Marcario LRS spectrograph on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (R ~ 230) to obtain 2 x 900s spectra of the optical afterglow of GRB 080603B (GCN 7792, GCN 7794). The spectrum covers the wavelength range 4500 to 10,000 Angstrom. We clearly detect the Lyman break and several metal absorption features corresponding to a redshift z = 2.69. No other systems are detected and our result confirms the redshift determination by Fynbo et al. (GCN 7797). We thank the HET staff for performing this challenging observation, in particular Matthew Shetrone."