TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 3041 SUBJECT: GRB 050219a, optical observations DATE: 05/02/19 23:50:51 GMT FROM: Alberto Castro-Tirado at Inst.de Astro. de Andalucia A. de Ugarte Postigo (IAA-CSIC, Granada), S. Eguchi (Stelab, Nagoya Univ.), J. Gorosabel (IAA-CSIC), Ph. Yock (Univ. of Auckland) and A.J. Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIC), report: "Following the detection by SWIFT of GRB 050219a (Hullinger et al. GCN Circ. 3038) we imaged the error box with the 0.6 m telescope at Mt. John Univ. Observatory. We obtained 3 x 300s images with the MOA camera (+ wide R-band filter) under poor seeing conditions (4"- 5") starting on 19.613 Feb (i.e. 2.05 hr after the event). Additional observations were performed with a wide B-band filter. Comparison of the stacked R-band image with the DSS-2 revealed neither counterpart within the 6" radius X-ray afterglow position given by the SWIFT/XRT (Romano et al. GCN Circ. 3036) nor variable source to about R = 20.5 within the 4' radius SWIFT/BAT error box."