TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  26960
SUBJECT: GRB 200131A: VIRT optical transient detection
DATE:    20/02/01 05:23:11 GMT
FROM:    Priyadarshini Gokuldass at U. of the Virgin Islands  <priyadass.94@gmail.com>

P. Gokuldass (UVI), D. Morris (UVI), N. Orange (OrangeWave Innovative
Science, LLC), A. Cucchiara (College of Marin), R. Strausbaugh (UVI) report:


We observed the field of GRB 200131A (Sbarufatti et al. GCN 26953) with the
0.5m Virgin Island Robotic Telescope (VIRT) at the University of the Virgin
Islands' Etelman Observatory on 01-31-2020 starting at 23:28:45 UT (T+67
minutes). We performed a series of exposures in R filter. The weather
conditions were variable during the hours of observation and the zenith
angle at the start of observations was 54 degrees and setting. The midpoint
of the exposures is ~T+1.6 hrs. We observed the Swift XRT position with a
20'x20' field of view

We detect an uncatalogued source consistent with the UVOT position
(Sbarufatti et al. GCN 26953) and MASTER OT position (Lipunov et al. 26954)
with magnitude:

  R= 16.8 +/- 0.2

The magnitude is estimated from comparison to nearby USNO B1 stars and is
not corrected for Galactic extinction. The VIRT is still in the
commissioning phase.

This work is supported by NASA-MUREP-MIRO grant NNX15AP95A, NSF EiR AST
Award 1901296, and NSF HBCU-UP AST Award 1831682. This message can be cited.