The very faint K-band afterglow of GRB 020819 and the dust extinction hypothesis of the dark bursts

© 2003. The American Astronomical Society. This work was based on data obtained on the German Spanish Astronomical Centre, Calar Alto, operated by the Max-Planck-Institut for Astronomy, Heidelberg, jointly with the Spanish National Commission for Astronomy. It has profited from the GCN data base at NASA maintained by Scott Barthelmy, NASA. This paper is partly based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla and Paranal, Chile (ESO Programme 165.H- 0464). We thank the observers and the staff at ESO for performing the SOFI and the ISAAC observations. This study has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. S. K. acknowledges helpful comments by Johan Fynbo, Jens Hjorth, Attila Mészáros, Holger Pedersen, and Paul Vreeswijk. J. M. C. C. acknowledges the receipt of a FPI doctoral fellowship from Spain’s Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología. We thank an anonymous referee for a prompt and very helpful reply.