TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 23695 SUBJECT: GRB 190114C: NOT optical counterpart and redshift DATE: 19/01/14 22:45:48 GMT FROM: Jonatan Selsing at DARK/NBI J. Selsing (DAWN/NBI and DAWN/DTU), J.P.U. Fynbo (DAWN/NBI and DAWN/DTU), K.E. Heintz (Univ. of Iceland), D. Watson (DAWN/NBI and DAWN/DTU), and S. Dyrbye (NOT), report on behalf of a larger collaboration: We observed the optical afterglow of GRB 190114C (Gropp et al., GCN 23688; Tyurina et al., GCN 23690, de Ugarte Postigo et al., GCN 23692, Lipunov et al. GCN 23693) with the 2.5-m Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) equipped with the Alfosc instument. We have carried out a series of 300s griz observations, starting at 21:26:28 UT, January 14th - 29 minutes after the BAT trigger. The optical counterpart is very clearly detected. We have calibrated the photometric zeropoint against the Pan-STARRS catalog and derive the following magnitudes for the afterglow: g = 17.72 +- 0.11 AB mag  r = 16.90 +- 0.04 AB mag  i = 16.40 +- 0.02 AB mag  z = 16.25 +- 0.12 AB mag We immediately followed up with spectroscopic observations using the Alfosc instrument, in which the afterglow is very clearly detected. From the detection of strong absorption lines from Ca H & K along with Na ID in the afterglow spectrum, we derive a redshift of z = 0.42, which we suggest is the redshift of the GRB. [GCN OPS NOTE(15jan19): Per author's request, Dyrbye was moved from the last paragraph to the author list.]