TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 9527 SUBJECT: GRB090618: Swift/UVOT bright afterglow detection DATE: 09/06/18 19:00:10 GMT FROM: Patricia Schady at MSSL/Swift P. Schady (MSSL-UCL) reports on behalf of the Swift UVOT team: The Swift/UVOT began settled observations of the field of GRB 090618 129s after the BAT trigger (Schady et al., GCN Circ. 9512) and a decaying source is detected in all UVOT filters at the position reported in Schady et al. (GCN Circ. 9512), consistent with refined XRT error circle (Evans et al., GCN Circ. 9521) as well as the optical afterglow position reported in a number of other GCNs (GCN Circ. 9512, 9514, 9515). The detection of the afterglow of GRB 090618 in all filters puts an upper limit on the redshift of z < 1.7, consistent with the redshift constraints reported by Cenko et al. (GCN Circ. 9518). The magnitudes for the first UVOT observation of GRB 090618 in each filter are as follows: Filter T_start(s) T_stop(s) Exp(s) Mag white 129 279 147 14.27+/-0.01 v 671 691 19 15.60+/-0.09 b 596 616 19 15.92+/-0.06 u 340 590 246 14.62+/-0.01 uvw1 720 740 19 15.09+/-0.08 uvm2 695 715 19 15.23+/-0.12 uvw2 647 667 19 15.27+/-0.10 The values quoted above are not corrected for the Galactic extinction due to the reddening of E(B-V) = 0.09 in the direction of the burst (Schlegel et al. 1998). The photometry is on the UVOT photometric system described in Poole et al. (2008, MNRAS, 383, 627).