TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 15900 SUBJECT: GRB 140301A: VLT/X-shooter redshift DATE: 14/03/02 06:16:27 GMT FROM: Thomas Kruehler at Dark Cosmology Center T. Kruehler (ESO), N. R. Tanvir (Univ. Leicester) D. Malesani, D. Xu, J. P. U. Fynbo (DARK/NBI) report on behalf of a larger collaboration: We observed the optical source (Kruehler et al., GCN 15899) inside the XRT error circle (Goad et al., GCN 15898) of GRB 140301A (Page et al., GCN 15896) with the VLT equipped with the X-shooter spectrograph. Our spectrum covers the wavelength range between 3000 and 20000 AA and consists of 12 nodded spectra with an integration time of 600 s each. A preliminary analysis of the spectrum reveals a faint continuum in which we tentatively identify absorption lines of the MgII doublet at z = 1.416. At the same redshift and with a spatial offset of up to ~1" we detect strong emission lines of [OII], Hbeta, [OIII], Halpha and [NII], characteristic for emission from the GRB host. We acknowledge excellent support from the observing staff in Paranal, in particular Julien Girard and Valentin Ivanov.