TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  6162
SUBJECT: GRB 070223: Optical Observations
DATE:    07/03/01 01:21:30 GMT
FROM:    Nestor Mirabal at Columbia U  <mirabal@astro.columbia.edu>

N. Mirabal (Columbia U.), A. Melandri (Liverpool JMU), and
J. P. Halpern (Columbia U.) report

"We have further analyzed deep R-band images of Swift
GRB 070223 (Vetere et al., GCN 6125) obtained with the
2-m Liverpool Telescope (Melandri, GCN 6127) and the
MDM 1.3m telescope (Mirabal & Halpern, GCN 6126) on
Feb. 23.025 and Feb. 23.272, respectively. The
afterglow candidate reported by Melandri (GCN 6127)
is not detected in our coadded frames. We therefore consider
it unlikely that this is the OT of GRB 070223.

In both sets of images, we find a faint object located at:

RA(J2000) = 10h 13m 48.19s
Dec(J2000) = +43d 07' 54.65 ''

with a preliminary magnitude of R~23.7, which is consistent with
the XRT position (Vetere, GCN 6130). We have not established
any optical variability at this time."