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Transient Alerts » in reply to GRB 261011A — GRB, X-ray Transient

In plain words Notable

On 11 October 2026 two satellites, SVOM and Swift, caught a long gamma-ray burst (a brief flash of high-energy light from a distant exploding star) in the southern sky. It lasted roughly a minute or more, depending on the instrument. Within minutes, telescopes around the world saw a fading visible-light and X-ray afterglow at the same spot. Two large telescopes measured the distance from the light's fingerprints: the burst happened at redshift 2.407, meaning the light left roughly 11 billion years ago. The afterglow faded below detection within about a day, and no host galaxy has been clearly detected. It is most likely an ordinary long burst from the collapse of a massive star. Swift's first report of an unusual light curve was withdrawn after a closer look showed that part of it came from noisy detectors.

How unusual is it? Most gamma-ray bursts have no measured distance, but this one has a confirmed redshift (2.407) from two independent telescopes plus a bright afterglow seen in many wavelengths; otherwise its properties look typical, and the initially reported oddity turned out to be instrumental noise.

Written by an AI model (claude-sonnet-5-5) from the official reports in this thread, and rewritten as new reports arrived (version 9); last updated . It may contain mistakes: the reports themselves are the authority.

GRB 261011A: GMG Optical Observation

GCN Circular 45915
GRB 261011A: GMG Optical Observation
From: Rui-Zhi Li at Yunnan Observatories, CAS
Issued: 2026-10-12 01:58 UTC
Type: GRB, Optical Transient

R.-Z. Li, B.-T. Wang, F.-F. Song, J. Mao, K.-X. Lu and B. Wang (YNAO, CAS) report:

We observed the field of GRB 261011A (Huang et al., GCN 45895; Cenko et al., GCN 45896; T0 at 2026-10-11T13:46:41) using the GMG-2.4m telescope at the Lijiang Observatory.
The observation began at 2026-10-11T16:41:50, about 2.92 hours after the trigger.

The optical counterpart reported by Swift-UVOT (Cenko et al., GCN 45896) and by other facilities (O'Neill et al., GCN 45897; Fu et al., GCN 45898; Izzo et al., GCN 45899; Wu et al., GCN 45900; Yin et al., GCN 45901; Shi et al., GCN 45903; Aryan et al., GCN 45904; Arya et al., GCN 45907; Izzo et al., GCN 45909; Huang et al., GCN 45913; Bochenek et al., GCN 45914) was detected in was detected in an r-band image.

The preliminary analysis results are shown as follows:


| Start time [UTC] | Exposure [s] | Tmid-T0 [h] | Filter | AB Magnitude | 5-sigma U.L.|
|----------------------- | -------------- |------------- | -------- | -------------- | --------------|
|2026-10-11 16:41:50.018 | 300 | 2.961 | r | 20.46 ± 0.04 | 22.2 |

The given magnitudes are derived based on calibration against Legacy Survey DR10 field stars, and are not corrected for the expected Galactic foreground extinction, corresponding to a reddening of E(B-V) = 0.019 mag in the direction of the optical counterpart (Schlafly & Finkbeiner 2011).

Every one of the gamma-ray bursts GCN reports is posted here.
Relayed automatically from NASA's General Coordinates Network.

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