TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 31502 SUBJECT: GRB 220118A: NUTTelA-TAO / BSTI Early Optical Limits (Preliminary) DATE: 22/01/20 08:11:17 GMT FROM: Toktarkhan Komesh at Nazarbayev University T. Komesh (NU), B. Grossan (UCB, NU), Z. Maksut (NU), M. Krugov (FAI),  E. Linder (UCB, NU), E. Abdikamalov (NU), K. Baigarin (NU), G. F. Smoot (HKUST, UCB, NU), report on behalf of the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory: The Nazarbayev University Transient Telescope at Assy-Turgen Astrophysical Observatory (NUTTelA-TAO) observed the field of GRB 220118A 11 s after receipt an automated GCN / BAT position alert, observing in Sloan i' band, with the Burst Simultaneous Three-Channel Imager (BSTI; Grossan, Kumar & Smoot 2019, JHEA, 32, 14). We started observations at 18:21:08 UT on 2022-01-18, 30 s after the BAT trigger. Observations were made in cloudy conditions starting at about 25 deg. target altitude. No source consistent with the XRT (M.R. Goad et al., GCN Circ. 31495) was detected.  We report the following results: start time    t-t0(s)  end time        ULi'       exposure_time (s) ------------    --------  ------------          ------ -------------------- 18:21:08     30     18:22:08          15.3           60 18:22:32     114   18:25:02          16.0         150 18:25:02     264   18:27:32          16.4         150 18:27:32     414   18:30:02          17.2         150 18:30:02     564   18:32:32          17.4         150 start time is in UT. t-t0(s) gives the time since trigger, in seconds. UL i', gives the 5 sigma upper limit sensitivity in magnitudes, for images co-added to the given exposure time. The first row in the table corresponds to co-adds of an initial short exposure image sequence of 7.5 s. The following rows correspond to co-adds from a continuing series of 15 s exposures.  Calibration was done with the 4 bright Pan-STARRS catalog stars on our images. We caution the reader that these are preliminary results, without color or other corrections. Please also note that times are approximate. ---------------------------------- NU = Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan UCB = University of California, Berkeley, USA HKUST = Hong Kong University of Science and Technology FAI = Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, Kazakhstan The NUTTelA-TAO Team acknowledges the support of the staff of the Assy-Turgen Astrophysical Observatory, Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, Almaty, Kazkhstan.