GCN Circular 29066
Subject
GRB 201216C: VLT afterglow candidate discovery
Date
2020-12-17T02:36:55Z (3 years ago)
From
Luca Izzo at DARK/NBI <luca.izzo@gmail.com>
L. Izzo (DARK/NBI), D. B. Malesani (DTU Space) and D. A. Kann (HETH, IAA/CSIC) report:
We observed the field of GRB 201216C (Beardmore et al., GCN #29061, Fermi GBM team, GCN #29063) using the ESO VLT UT3 (Melipal) equipped with the X-shooter acquisition camera. Observations started at 01:18:47 UT on 2020-12-17 (2.19 hr after the BAT trigger) and consisted of 3x40 s, 3x30 s, 3x60 s exposures obtained in the Sloan g', r', z' bands, respectively.
We detect a new source at coordinates RA: 01:05:28.980, Dec: +16:31:00.0 (J2000.0), consistent with the Swift-XRT refined position (Campana et al., GCN #29064). No source is detected in archival Pan-STARRS images at this position, we therefore consider it to be the afterglow of GRB 201216C. From the stacked r'-band image we report a preliminary magnitude of 21.81+-0.05 mag (AB).
We acknowledge excellent support from the ESO observing staff in Paranal, in particular Zahed Wahhaj and Bin Yang.