TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 9039 SUBJECT: GRB 090323: Faulkes Telescope South Observations DATE: 09/03/26 10:11:36 GMT FROM: Cristiano Guidorzi at Ferrara U,Italy C. Guidorzi (U. Ferrara), I. A. Steele, A. Melandri, D. Bersier (Liverpool JMU), A. Gomboc (U. Ljubljana), S. Kobayashi, C.J. Mottram, C.G. Mundell, R.J. Smith (Liverpool JMU), P. O'Brien, N. Bannister, N. Tanvir (U. Leicester) on behalf of a large collaboration report: The 2-m Faulkes Telescope South (Siding Spring, Australia) began observing the afterglow (Updike et al., GCN Circ. 9026; Cenko et al., GCN Circ. 9027) of the Fermi GBM/LAT GRB 090323 (Ohno et al., GCN Circ. 9021; van der Horst et al., GCN Circ. 9035) on March 25, 11:50:55 UT, i.e. at 2.49 days post burst. Observations were carried out in filters R and i. The afterglow is clearly detected in both filters with the following magnitudes: Filter Tmid(days) Exposure(s) Mag ------------------------------------------------- i 2.50 6x300 21.3 +/- 0.2 R 2.53 6x300 21.7 +/- 0.1 ------------------------------------------------- Magnitudes are calibrated with respect to nearby SDSS stars. Comparing with previous reports (Kann et al., GCN Circ. 9033; Wang et al., GCN Circ. 9034; Perley et al., GCN Circ. 9036; Burenin et al., GCN Circ. 9037) we confirm the steepening of the decay.