TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  6700
SUBJECT: GRB 070802: Confirmation of the optical afterglow
DATE:    07/08/02 17:55:59 GMT
FROM:    Daniele Malesani at Niels Bohr Inst,Dark Cosmology Center  <malesani@astro.ku.dk>

D. Malesani, J.P.U. Fynbo, J. Hjorth, and P.M. Vreeswijk (DARK) report 
on behalf of a larger collaboration:

We report further analysis of our images (Malesani et al., GCN 6696) of 
GRB 070802 (Barthelmy et al., GCN 6692). Observations span the range 
08:01 - 10:09 UT, that is 0.9 - 3.0 hr after the GRB. The object 
reported by Greiner et al. (GCN 6694) and Berger & Murphy (GCN 6695) is 
well detected in all our images, and is clearly fading following a 
power-law decay with index alpha = 0.6+-0.1. Based on instrumental 
zeropoints, the afterglow looks significantly reddened, with a color R-I 
= 0.55+-0.1.

We acknowledge excellent support from the VLT staff.