TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 28138 SUBJECT: GRB 200716C: Optical observations from HCT DATE: 20/07/18 12:03:42 GMT FROM: Brajesh Kumar at Indian Inst. of Astrophysics Brajesh Kumar (ARIES, Nainital), Anirban Dutta, Avinash Singh, G. C. Anupama, D. K. Sahu and Pramod Kumar (IIA, Bengaluru) We observed the field of GRB 200716C (Fermi GBM, GCN #28123; Ukwatta et al., GCN #28124) with the Himalaya Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera (HFOSC) mounted on the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (IAO, Hanle, India). Multiple frames (each 300 sec) of the GRB field in Bessell R and I bands were obtained under moderate sky conditions. Preliminary PSF photometry on the stacked images was performed and calibrated against USNO-B1 catalogue. The estimated magnitudes are listed below: DATE | UT (mean) | Exposure | Filter | Mag 2020-07-17 17:06:34 300x3 R 17.55 +/- 0.18 2020-07-17 17:23:33 300X3 I 17.19 +/- 0.15 Here, we caution that there is an extended object near the GRB location (possibly the host galaxy, D'Avanzo et al. GCN #28132). However, the extended source is fainter (~19.23 and ~18.67 mag in R and I bands, respectively, USNO-B1). Therefore, the estimated magnitudes likely belong to the OT candidate (Lipunov et al., GCN #28125; Hu et al., GCN #28126), affected by the host contamination. We thank the staff at IAO and CREST for helping with the observations.