TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 33521 SUBJECT: GRB 230325A: X-shooter optical afterglow and redshift DATE: 23/03/25 20:56:07 GMT FROM: Daniele B Malesani at Radboud U Danielle Pieterse (Radboud Univ.), Johan P. U. Fynbo (DAWN/NBI), Luca Izzo (DARK/NBI), Jesse Palmerio (GEPI, Obs. Paris and IAP), Andrea Saccardi (GEPI, Obs. Paris), Nial R. Tanvir (Leicester), Dong Xu (NAO/CAS), Zi-Pei Zhu (NAOC, HUST), Daniele B. Malesani (Radboud univ. and DAWN/NBI) and Pall Jakobsson (Univ. Iceland), report on behalf of the Stargate collabaration: We observed the field of GRB 230325A (Moss et al., GCN 33516) using the ESO VLT UT3 (Melipal) equipped with the X-shooter spectrograph. Images were also taken with the acquisition camera. An object is visible consistent with the UVOT-enhanced XRT position (Goad et al., GCN 33518), at coordinates (0.5" error): RA = 19:47:23.98  (J2000) Dec = -46:04:33.3  (J2000) For this object, we measure the following magnitudes (calibrated against nearby objects from the Legacy Survey; Dey et al. 2019, AJ, 157, 168): Filter Mean date        Time since GRB  Exptime  Magnitude         (UT)             (days)          (s)      (AB) -------------------------------------------------------------- r      2023 Mar 25.371  0.235           45       22.70 +- 0.08 z      2023 Mar 25.372  0.236           60       22.35 +- 0.08 g      2023 Mar 25.374  0.237           45       22.16 +- 0.23 An object is present at a consistent location in the Legacy Survey, but significantly fainter, and it is the likely GRB host galaxy. The consistency with the XRT position and the flux increase compared to the Legacy Survey confirm that the object we see in the X-shooter images is the optical afterglow of GRB 230325A. Spectroscopy was carried out, covering the wavelength range 3000-21000 AA, and consisting of 2 exposures by 600 s each. The observation mid time was 2023 Mar 25.383 UT (0.247 days after the GRB). Only a faint continuum is detected from this source, which allows us to set a redshift upper limit z <~ 3. In addition, two emission lines are visible, which are consistent with Halpha and [O III] 5008 at a common redshift z = 1.664, which we suggest to be the GRB redshift. We acknowledge excellent support from the ESO observing staff in Paranal, in particular Fuyan Bian and Konrad Tristram.