TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 2178 SUBJECT: GRB 030429: ROTSE-III observations DATE: 03/04/29 17:24:47 GMT FROM: Don Smith at U michigan D. A. Smith on behalf of the ROTSE collaboration reports: The ROTSE-IIIa telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, NSW, responded automatically to the HETE ground alert 2695, beginning its first image less than seven seconds after the alert time stamp, or 1.87 hours after the burst trigger. The automated burst response sequence consisted of ten 5-s, ten 20-s, and forty 60-s images. No sources not already in the USNO catalog were found within 1.5 error radii of the SXC burst location. Typical limiting magnitudes for these images were 17.3, 18.2, and 18.7, respectively. These magnitudes are unfiltered and calibrated against the USNO A2.0 catalog R-band. We co-added the first five sets of ten frames to push the limiting magnitudes to 18.8, 19.5, and 19.9, respectively. No candidate counterpart sources were found near the error box.