TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 1309 SUBJECT: Near-Infrared Observations of GRB020322 at TIRGO DATE: 02/03/26 15:07:12 GMT FROM: Nicola Masetti at ITeSRE,CNR,Bologna F. Mannucci (IRA/CNR, Firenze), N. Masetti (IASF/CNR, Bologna), E. Pian (INAF, Astr. Obs. Trieste), P. Ranfagni (INAF, Astr. Obs. Arcetri), S. Covino (INAF, Astr. Obs. Brera), G.L. Israel (INAF, Astr. Obs. Rome), on behalf of a larger collaboration, report: We imaged the field of GRB020322 (Piro, GCN #1290) with TIRGO equipped with the near-IR camera ARNICA and the J and Kc filters on 2002 Mar 24.14 - 24.18 UT and on 2002 Mar 25.10 - 25.18 UT. The total exposure times were: 78 min in J and 26 min in Kc on the first epoch; 80 min in J and 66 min in Kc on the second. The PSF FWHM was about 3.0 arcsec on both nights. The images in both bands were calibrated by using an average zero point. No source is significantly detected either at the position of the optical afterglow of this GRB (source `b' of Bloom et al., GCN #1296) or within the XMM-Newton error box (Ehle et al., GCN #1293) down to 3-sigma limiting magnitudes of J = 19.9 and Kc = 18.1 on the first epoch and of J = 19.9 and Kc = 18.7 on the second. However, a ~1-sigma excess is seen at the position of the source `b' in the Kc-band image acquired on the first epoch. A close-up of the four summed images on the XMM-Newton error box can be found at http://tonno.tesre.bo.cnr.it/~masetti/grb020322.html This message may be cited.