TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 9152 SUBJECT: GRB 090418: PAIRITEL NIR detection DATE: 09/04/18 14:13:00 GMT FROM: Bethany Cobb at UC Berkeley B. E. Cobb and J. S. Bloom (UC Berkeley) report: We observed the optical afterglow of GRB 090418 (Mangano et al., GCN 9149) with the 1.3-m Peters Automated Infrared Imaging Telescope (PAIRITEL) beginning at 2009-04-18 11:34 UT, 26 minutes after the Swift Trigger. We detect the afterglow (Chornock et al., GCN 9148; Yuan et al., GCN 9150) in 651 sec mosaics of 7.8 sec simultaneous individual exposures in the J, H, and Ks filters. Preliminary photometry for the afterglow in these mosaics, with midtime 2009-04-18 11:43 UT (35 minutes post-burst), yields J = 17.7 +- 0.4, H = 17.5 +- 0.4, and Ks = 16.1 +- 0.4 (all magnitudes given in the Vega system), calibrated to the 2MASS system.