TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 2321 SUBJECT: XRF030723: optical observations DATE: 03/07/25 16:20:25 GMT FROM: Brian Lindgren Jensen at U.of Copenhagen B. L. Jensen (U. Copenhagen), J. Gorosabel (IAA-CSIC/STScI), J. Hjorth, C. Vinter (U. Copenhagen), J. P. U. Fynbo (U. Aarhus), P. M. Vreeswijk (ESO Chile) report: "R-band exposures covering the 2' radius HETE-2 SXC error circle of XRF 030723 (Prigozhin et al., GCN #2313) were obtained at the Danish 1.5-m telescope (ESO La Silla) on July 24.3 and July 25.3 2003 UT. In the combined images, reaching limiting magnitudes of R ~ 24, no counterpart to the first ROTSE-III source (Smith & Quimby, GCN #2318) is apparent. At RA(J2000.0) = 21 49 24.54, Dec (J2000.0) = -27 40 35.0, 2.1" from the reported location of the second ROTSE-III source, an object with R = 23.2 +- 0.3 is detected (photometry based on the calibration provided by Henden (GCN #2317)). The object is unresolved in 1.3" seeing and appears to be constant in brightness between the two epochs. Images are posted at http://www.astro.ku.dk/~brian_j/grb/grb030723 "