TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  29674
SUBJECT: GRB 201216C: VIRT optical observations
DATE:    21/03/19 23:01:33 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),
R. Strausbaugh (UVI), A. Cucchiara (UVI/College of Marin) report:

We observed the field of GRB201216C (V. Lipunov et al., GCN 29062) with the
0.5m Virgin Island Robotic Telescope (VIRT) at the University of the Virgin
Islands' Etelman Observatory on 12-16-2020 starting at 23:43:20.5 UT (T+36
mins).

We performed a series of exposures in R filter with a total exposure
of 2060 s. The weather conditions were very clear during the hours of
observation with an average arimass of 1.0.

We find no new source within the enhanced XRT position error circle
(S. Campana et al., 29064) and report the following 3-sigma upper limit:

T_mid       ||Exposure     ||Filter      ||Limit
T+ 1 hr      ||2060s           ||R            ||>20.65

The limit 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.