3 Conclusions

The observation of a gamma-ray burst afterglow using AXAF can be used for several purposes. The use of the time depends upon how long the observation time is. For a very short observation $\sim 10^3$ s, obtaining the burst position shortly after the burst is the best use of the time. If the optical counterpart has already been detected, then AXAF can add little to the observation. If no optical counterpart is detected within a day, then the accurate X-ray position will permit association to be made with a galaxy to a very deep limiting magnitude, 28-30 m_v. For the soft gamma-ray repeaters which are observable out to $\sim 1$ Mpc a significant flux of fluorescent photons might be observable for a time of $\sim$ days.

Acknowledgements

Part of this work was supported by NASA under contract No. NAS8-38252. The author wishes to thank Audrey Garmire for some useful calculations and comments, and Neil Gehrels and Fiona Harrison for a useful discussion.