TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 16280 SUBJECT: GRB 140515A: GROND observation of the afterglow DATE: 14/05/16 12:22:49 GMT FROM: Sebastian Schmidl at TLS Tautenburg J. Graham (MPE Garching), S. Schmidl (TLS Tautenburg), and J. Greiner (MPE Garching) report on behalf of the GROND team: We observed the field of GRB 140515A (Swift trigger 599037; D'Avanzo et al., GCN 16267) simultaneously in g'r'i'z'JHK with GROND (Greiner et al. 2008, PASP 120, 405) mounted at the 2.2m MPG telescope at ESO La Silla Observatory (Chile). Observations started at 22:53 UT on March 15, 2014, 13.7 hrs after the GRB trigger. They were performed at an average seeing of 0.9" and at an average airmass of 1.4. We detect the afterglow reported by Chornock et al. (GCN 16269). Based on a total exposure of 50 min in g'r'i'z' and 40 min in JHK, at a mid-time of 17.0 hrs after the burst, we measure the following preliminary magnitudes (in AB): g' > 24.1 mag, r' > 24.5 mag, i' > 24.2 mag, z' = 22.1 +/- 0.1 mag, J = 20.9 +/- 0.2 mag, H = 20.9 +/- 0.2 mag, and K > 19.1 mag. Based on these data, the photometric redshift is z= 6.5 +/-0.2, which is consistent with the spectroscopic redshift reported by Chornock et al. (GCN 16269). Given magnitudes are calibrated against SDSS (g'r'i'z') as well as 2MASS (JHK) field stars and are not corrected for the expected Galactic foreground extinction corresponding to a reddening of E_(B-V) = 0.02 mag in the direction of the burst (Schlegel et al. 1998).