TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 3067 SUBJECT: PROMPT VRcIc Observations of GRB 050223 DATE: 05/03/01 05:38:41 GMT FROM: Melissa Nysewander at UNC,Chapel Hill M. Nysewander, M. Bayliss, J. Haislip, P. Price (Hawaii), C. MacLeod, J. Kirchbrown, D. Moschler, A. Foster, D. Reichart, O. Awam, A. Davis, M. Greco, D. Kumar, T. Mack, A. Mann, B. Russ, C. Owen, and J. Phelps report on behalf of the UNC team of the FUN GRB Collaboration: We observed the 8 arcsecond position of the uncataloged x-ray source found by the Swift XRT instrument (Giommi et al., GCN 3054) in the field of GRB 050223 with three telescopes of the PROMPT robotic telescope array located at CTIO. Manual observations first began in V 2.5 hours after the burst at high airmass and no new sources were observed to the limiting magnitude of a single exposure. Observations continued in Rc and Ic and details are given below. PROMPT filter exposures start mean 2s limiting # time (hr) time (hr) magnitude 1 Rc 20x90s, 120x60s 2.8 4.1 21.2 3 V 130x90s 2.5 4.2 21.3 5 Ic 60x90s 4.3 5.1 21.1 times are given in hours after the burst (03:09:06 UT). Limiting magnitudes were calculated using 2 NOMAD stars for V, and 5 USNO-B1.0 stars for Ic and Rc. An overview of PROMPT can be found at astro-ph/0502429. The project is still in the building/commissioning phase with only three telescopes currently online.