TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  570
SUBJECT: GRB 000301C : Optical Candidate
DATE:    00/03/03 08:05:32 GMT
FROM:    Brian Lindgren Jensen at U.of Copenhagen  <brian_j@astro.ku.dk>

J. P. U. Fynbo (U. Of Aarhus),
B. L. Jensen, J. Hjorth, H. Pedersen (U. of Copenhagen) and
J. Gorosabel (DSRI, Copenhagen)
on behalf of a larger European GRB Consortium report:

"Using the ALFOSC on the 2.5m Nordic Optical Telescope, we have
obtained I, R, B, and U-band imaging of the field of GRB 000301C
(Smith et al., GCN #568) on 2000 March 3.14-3.28 UT. Comparing with
DSS-2
plates we find an object which is notoriously absent from DSS-2
(red) and (blue).

The coordinates of this object are:

RA(J2000)  :  16 20 18.6
Dec(J2000) : +29 26 36
(with an uncertainty of about 1")

This object is detected in individual exposures of 900s,
in all four colors.

Preliminary USNO-A1.0-based magnitude is: R~20.3 +- 0.5 .
The object appears bluer than most GRB OTs observed so far.

Sections of the images will be made available at:
http://www.astro.ku.dk/~brian_j/grb/grb000301c

along with a DSS-2 finding chart."


[GCN OPS NOTE (03Mar00 14:15 UT):  The URL in the original posting
of this circular had an error.  This archived copy of the circular
has been corrected.]