GCN Circular 2864

Matt Bayliss, Melissa Nysewander, Andrew Foster, Dan Reichart, and Jane
Moran report on behalf of the U. North Carolina team of the FUN GRB
Collaboration:

We imaged an 11.7 arcmin x 11.7 arcmin field near the center of the
localization of GRB 041217 (Palmer et al., GCN 2853
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 ) for 96 x 60 sec in Rc
beginning 22.7 hours after the burst with PROMPT Telescope 5 at CTIO.

Visual comparison to POSS2-Red reveals no obvious transients, however our
image goes deeper.  Calibration to 6 USNO-A2.0 stars yields a 3-sigma
limiting magnitude of Rc = 21.5 at a mean time of 23.8 hours after the
burst for this region.  Only the first candidate of Berger & Gonzalez (GCN
2859
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 ) would lie in our field, but we find nothing at this location.  Our
image can be found at:

http://www.physics.unc.edu/~mnysewan/grb041217.html

PROMPT is very early into construction and commissioning.  Enclosure
construction began in September 2004:

http://www.physics.unc.edu/~evans/promptcam/promptcam.html

Construction and commissioning of the first two telescopes began only two
and a half days prior to this burst.  All six telescopes will be completed
and upgraded to 0.41m Ritchey-Chretien telescopes by mid-2005.  For more
information on PROMPT:

http://www.physics.unc.edu/~reichart/prompt.html