GCN Circular 2185

Johan P. U. Fynbo (U. of Aarhus), Jens Hjorth (U. of Copenhagen), 
Sylvio Klose (TLS Tautenburg), Javier Gorosabel (IAA-CSIC/STScI), 
Andrew Levan (U. of Leicester), Nial Tanvir (U. of Hertfordshire), 
report on behalf of the GRACE collaboration:

"We have observed the field of GRB 030429 (=HETE trigger 2695) on two 
epochs with the ESO VLT. Using ISAAC on UT1 we have obtained Js and Ks
observations and with FORS2 on UT2 we have obtained V, R and I
observations. Our observations were carried out on April 29.94 and 
April 30.20 UT, i.e. 12.6 and 18.1 hours after the burst. We confirm 
the fading of the afterglow candidate proposed by Gilmore et al. 
(GCN 2184
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 ). Between our two epochs the source has faded by 0.43 
magnitudes in the V band. In our second epoch image the magnitudes of 
the source are about R=22 and Ks=17.9 implying a decay slope close to
1. The source is located 1.2 arcsec from an extended source NW of 
the afterglow position. This source has magnitudes of about R=24
and Ks=18.2. Our absolute photometry is based on preliminary zeropoints 
and is hence subject to considerable uncertainties. 

We note that the source is located 1.2 arcmin from the center of and
is hence formally outside the 90% SXC error-circle.

We acknowledge excellent support from the Paranal staff, in 
particular Cedric Ledoux, Rachel Johnson, Poshak Gandhi and Elena
Mason."