{
  "bibcode": "2002GCN..1317....1K",
  "body": "S. Klose (Thueringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg),\nH. Dannerbauer, J. Greiner (MPE Garching, AIP Potsdam), \nF. J. Vrba (USNO), A. Henden (USRA/USNO),\nD. H. Hartmann (Clemson University),\nJ. Snigula (Universitaetssternwarte Muenchen),\nU. Thiele (MPIA Heidelberg, Calar Alto), \nA.J. Castro-Tirado, J. Gorosabel (LAEFF-INTA, Madrid, and IAA-CSIC, Granada), \nJ.M. Castro Ceron (ROA San Fernando),\nand \nE. Pian (INAF, Astr. Obs. Trieste), \n\non behalf of an even larger GRB team\n\nreport:\n\n\nThe r=8 arcmin error circle of the HETE burst GRB 020331 (Ricker et al., \nGCN #1315) was imaged in the K' band on April 1, 0:02 UT - 1:22 UT, \nusing the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope equipped with the Omega Prime\nnear-infrared camera (1k x 1k; fov about 6.7 x 6.7 arcmin). A mosaic\nwas taken to cover the whole error box. The integration time per field was\n10 min. The limiting magnitude is about K'=19. Because of unstable\nweather conditions about 10% of the error box have not been imaged.\nAbout 20% of the frames are affected by a bad sky.\n\nBased  on a visual comparison with the corresponding DSS2 red images we \nfind a best afterglow candidate at coordinates  \n\n        RA, DEC (J2000) = 13:16:15.0, -17:55:04   +/- 2 arcsec\n\nvery close to the bulge of an extended galaxy. \n\nThe only reason why we prefer this object at the moment is a) it\nseems that it has no counterpart on the DSS2 red survey and b) it is\nrelatively bright in K'. At the moment we can only provide a rough\nestimate of its magnitude: K' = 17 +/- 1. We stress that this\nis not based on second epoch imaging, i.e. no fading behavior has yet \nbeen found.\n\nFurther observations are in progress.\n\n\nThis message is quotable.\n\n[GCN OPS NOTE (03apr02):  J.M. Castro Ceron was added to the author list.]",
  "circularId": 1317,
  "createdOn": 1017678457000,
  "email": "klose@tls-tautenburg.de",
  "subject": "GRB 020331, NIR observations",
  "submitter": "Sylvio Klose at TLS Tautenburg  <klose@tls-tautenburg.de>",
  "eventId": "GRB 020331"
}