TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 8866 SUBJECT: GRB 090201: ROTSE-III Optical Limits DATE: 09/02/01 19:01:36 GMT FROM: Brad Schaefer at LSU B. E. Schaefer (Louisiana State) reports on behalf of the ROTSE collaboration: ROTSE-IIIc, located at the H.E.S.S. site at Mt. Gamsberg, Namibia, responded to GRB 090201 (Swift trigger 341749; S. R. Oates et al., GCN 8865), producing images beginning 41 minutes after the burst trigger. Weather constraints in Namibia were the cause of the delay, as we had to await the clearing of the skies. Our first image was at 18:28:03.6 UT, 2460.9 s after the burst, under fair conditions. We took 10 5-sec, 10 20-sec and -8 60-sec exposures. These unfiltered images are calibrated relative to USNO A2.0 (R). Imaging is on going. Comparison to the DSS (second epoch) reveals no new sources within the 3-sigma Swift/BAT error circle, for both single images and coadding into sets of 10; the field is not crowded. Swift has not slewed to this burst yet, so there is no XRT position to examine in detail. Individual images have limiting magnitudes ranging from 16.6-17.4; we set the following specific limits. start UT end UT t_exp(s) mlim t_start-tGRB(s) Coadd? -------------------------------------------------------------------- 18:28:03.6 18:29:03.6 60 16.6 2460.9 N 18:28:03.6 18:30:15.5 131 16.9 2460.9 Y 18:42:25.4 18:54:11.1 705 18.2 3322.7 Y