TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 27104 SUBJECT: GRB 200216B: Nanshan/NEXT early optical upper limit and possible host galaxy DATE: 20/02/16 15:09:41 GMT FROM: Dong Xu at NAOC/CAS D. Xu, Z.P. Zhu, X. Liu, B.Y. Yu, Y. Ma (NAOC), X. Gao (Urumqi No.1 Senior High School) report: We observed the field of GRB 200216B (D'Avanzo et al., GCN 27102) using the NEXT 0.6m optical telescope located at Nanshan, Xinjiang, China. Observations automatically started at 13:33:46 UT on 2002-02-16, i.e., 73 s after the BAT trigger. We obtained 3x40 s, 4x60 s, 3x90 s and onging 200 s frames in the Sloan r-filter. The altitude for the GRB and the weather has been improving. No optical afterglow is detected in our images at the XRT position (D'Avanzo et al., GCN 27102) down to a limiting magnitude of r~20.0. Meanwhile, we note that there exists a very marginally detected blob (thus noise fluctuation not ruled out yet), extended and being positionally consistent with the XRT position both in PanSTAR r-band field, centred at coordinates: R.A. (J2000) = 10:41:44.23, Dec. (J2000) = +19:28:33.18. The source would be of r~23 in depth, and might be the host galaxy of the GRB. Deep imaging would identify the nature of the blob.