TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 1945 SUBJECT: GRB 030324, optical observations DATE: 03/03/24 11:08:39 GMT FROM: Alberto Castro-Tirado at Inst.de Astro. de Andalucia S. Guzyi, A. J. Castro-Tirado (IAA-CSIC, Granada) N. Cardiel, S. Pedraz (CAHA, Calar Alto) S. Huferath, G. Worseck (AIP, Potsdam) J. Greiner (MPE, Garching) S. Klose (TLS, Tautenburg) A. de Ugarte (IAA-CSIC) J. Gorosabel (IAA-CSIC/STScI) report: Following the HETE-2 ground-based analysis position for GRB 030324 (trigger 2641), we have gotten a 300-s R-band image with the 2.2-m CAHA telescope (+CAFOS, 16' diameter FOV) at the German-Spanish Calar Alto Observatory in Southern Spain. The frame covers 90% of the HETE-2 14' diameter error box (missing a 2' ring at the border towards the NW of it) and it was taken starting at 04:41:43 UT (i.e.about 1.5 hr after the onset of the event). No obvious counterpart is found down to R = 20, when comparing with the DSS-2 (R-band). Further near-IR and deeper optical observations would be potentially interesting. This message can be quoted.