TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 9794 SUBJECT: GRB 090814: GROND Detection of an Optical Afterglow Candidate DATE: 09/08/14 02:59:30 GMT FROM: Felipe Olivares Estay at MPE GRB 090814: GROND Detection of an Optical Afterglow Candidate Adria Updike (Clemson University), Felipe Olivares, Paulo Afonso, Abdullah Yoldas, Jochen Greiner (all MPE Garching) report on behalf of the GROND team: We observed the field of GRB 090814 (Swift trigger 359951; Ukwatta et al., GCN #9793) simultaneously in g'r'i'z'JHK with GROND (Greiner et al. 2008, PASP 120, 405) mounted at the 2.2 m ESO/MPI telescope at La Silla Observatory (Chile). Observations started at 00:59 UT on Aug 14 2009, 7 minutes after the GRB trigger. They were performed at an average seeing of 1" and at an average airmass of 2.2. We found a single point source within the Swift-XRT error circle reported by Ukwatta et al. (GCN #9793) at RA (J2000.0) = 15 h 58 m 26.35 s DEC (J2000.0) = +25d 37' 52.4" with an uncertainty of 0.5". The candidate afterglow has the following preliminary AB magnitudes obtained from a first 140s g'r' exposure and 240s in the nIR: g' = 21.62 +/- 0.04 r' = 21.21 +/- 0.04 J > 21.1 H > 19.2 calibrated against SDSS and 2MASS catalogs. No extinction correction was applied. Ongoing data reduction suggests the source is fading.