TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 32957 SUBJECT: GRB 221120A: LDT Optical Afterglow Candidate DATE: 22/11/21 02:57:19 GMT FROM: Brendan O'Connor at UMD B. O'Connor (UMD/GWU), I. Andreoni (UMD), S. B. Cenko (NASA/GSFC), E. Troja (UTV/ASU), S. Dichiara (PSU), A. Kutyrev (NASA/GSFC), S. Veilleux (UMD), J. Durbak (UMD), on behalf of a larger collaboration: We performed target of opportunity observations of GRB 221120A (Eyles-Ferris et al., GCN 32955) with the 4.3m Lowell Discovery Telescope in Happy Jack, AZ. Observations began on October 21, 2022 at 01:32:08.76 UT corresponding to ~4 hr after the GRB. We obtained 8x150 s exposures in r-band under good conditions. At the North-East edge of the XRT localization we detect a faint source with magnitude r~24.1 AB mag. The source position is: RA, DEC (J2000) = 02:45:21.36, 43:14:34.9 +/- 0.5" No other sources are detected within 5" of the GRB localization to depth r>24.5 AB mag. At present we cannot evaluate whether this source is the counterpart to GRB 221120A. These results are consistent with previous upper limits (Swain et al., GCN 32956). We note the presence of a nearby bright galaxy at an offset of ~16.5" from the center of the XRT localization (Eyles-Ferris et al., GCN 32955). The galaxy has a photometric redshift from SDSS of z~0.12. At this redshift, the offset from the XRT position is ~37 kpc. The probability of chance coincidence is Pcc<0.05. Therefore. this is a plausible host galaxy of GRB221120A. Magnitudes are calibrated against nearby SDSS stars. These magnitudes are not corrected for Galactic interstellar reddening E(B-V)~0.08 mag. We thank the staff of the Lowell Observatory for assistance with these observations. Further observations are planned.