TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 13678 SUBJECT: GRB 120816A: Swift/UVOT Detection of the Optical Afterglow DATE: 12/08/18 16:32:59 GMT FROM: Stefan Immler at NASA/GSFC S. Immler (NASA/CRESST/GSFC) and K. L. Page (U Leicester) report on behalf of the Swift/UVOT team: The Swift/UVOT observed the field of GRB 120815A starting 117 s after the BAT trigger (Page et al., 2012, GCNC 13654). We detect an uncatalogued source inside the enhanced XRT error circle (Osborne et al., 2012, GCNC 13660) with preliminary coordinates RA (J2000.0) = 18:48:34.5 = 282.14359 (deg) Dec (J2000.0) = -06:56:16.4 = -6.93788 (deg) and an estimated uncertainty of 0.6 arcsec (radius, 90% confidence, statistical + systematic). The UVOT detection is consistent with the optical afterglow reported by Rau et al. (2012, GCNC 13657). Source magnitudes and 3-sigma upper limits at this location are given below (Breeveld et al. 2011, AIP Conf. Proc. 1358, 373). Filter TSTART TSTOP Exp Time Mag Err ----------------------------------------------------- white 134 284 147 18.5 0.2 white 573 6306 598 19.9 0.2 v 117 6716 500 >19.0 b 548 11345 1174 >19.6 u 293 7286 672 >21.1 uvw1 672 7126 490 >21.1 uvm2 647 6921 490 >19.5 uvw2 599 6511 490 >19.8 ----------------------------------------------------- The quoted magnitudes and upper limits have not been corrected for the Galactic extinction along the line of sight to this burst of E_{B-V} = 0.703 mag.