  On 2006 May 5, a four second duration, low energy, ~10^49 erg, Gamma-Ray
Burst (GRB) was observed, spatially associated with a z=0.0894 galaxy. Here, we
report the discovery of the GRB optical afterglow and observations of its
environment using Gemini-south, Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Chandra, Swift
and the Very Large Array. The optical afterglow of this GRB is spatially
associated with a prominent star forming region in the Sc-type galaxy 2dFGRS
S173Z112. Its proximity to a star forming region suggests that the progenitor
delay time, from birth to explosion, is smaller than about 10 Myr. Our HST deep
imaging rules out the presence of a supernova brighter than an absolute
magnitude of about -11 (or -12.6 in case of ``maximal'' extinction) at about
two weeks after the burst, and limits the ejected mass of radioactive Nickel 56
to be less than about 2x10^-4 solar mass (assuming no extinction). Although it
was suggested that GRB 060505 may belong to a new class of long-duration GRBs
with no supernova, we argue that the simplest interpretation is that the
physical mechanism responsible for this burst is the same as for short-duration
GRBs.
