TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 2636 SUBJECT: GRB 040730, infrared observations DATE: 04/08/02 16:12:03 GMT FROM: David Bersier at STScI D. Bersier, J. Rhoads, A. Fruchter (STScI), A. Levan (U. of Leicester), M. Albrecht (Bochum) and B. Reipurth (Hawaii) report on behalf of a larger collaboration: We have observed the field of GRB 040730 (Gotz et al., GCN 2634) with the Infrared Side Port Imager (ISPI) on the CTIO Blanco-4m telescope, starting 0.11d after the burst. We obtained several images on Jul 30 and Jul 31 UT in the J, H, and Ks bands. The 10' field of view was centered on the GRB position and covering the whole error box (2'). We used an image subtraction technique to search for any variable object in the Ks-band data. In this passband the foreground extinction is approximately 0.4 magnitude. We find no variable object in our first night data. Similarly, the comparison of the first and second night data reveal no transient, to a limiting magnitude of approximately Ks=17.6 (5 sigma).