{
  "submittedHow": "email",
  "body": "J. An, X. Liu, S.Q. Jiang, Z.P. Zhu, J. Zheng, S. Liu, J.J. Jin, S.Y. Fu, T.H. Lu, Z. Fan, D. Xu (NAOC), J.P.U. Fynbo (DAWN/NBI) report on behalf of a large collaboration:\n\nWe observed the field of the X-ray transient, EP 240416a, detected by EP/WXT (Cheng et al., GCN 36138) using the 2.16-m telescope located at Xinglong, Hebei, China. We obtained 5 x 360 s R-band frames with a median time of 2024-04-16T17:18:06, i.e., 14.6 hr after the EP trigger.\n\nThe stacked R-band image has a limiting magnitude of R ~ 22 mag, calibrated with the PanSTAR field. Inspection of the whole EP/WXT 3 arcmin error circle produces a few low S/N optical counterpart candidates.\n\nWe subsequently performed r-band photometry at the 2.56-m Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) equipped with the ALFOSC camera, and obtained 3 x 300 s frames in the Sloan r-band with a median time of 2024-04-17T01:00:00, i.e., 22.3 hr after the EP trigger.\n\nThe stacked r-band image has a limiting magnitude of r ~ 23.5 mag, calibrated with the PanSTAR field. Inspection of the whole EP/WXT 3 arcmin error circle also produces a few optical counterpart candidates.\n\nThe candidates from the two epochs are corssmatched in position and only one single optical transient (OT) is left. It is localized at\n\nR.A. = 13:32:34.51 (J2000)\nDec. = -13:37:48.88 (J2000)\n\nwith an uncertainty of radius ~ 0.3 arcsec, being consistent with the candidate reported by Kinder (Chen et al., GCN 36139). This OT has m(R) = 21.8 +/- 0.4 (Vega) in the Xinglong image and decayed to m(r) = 22.66 +/- 0.18 (AB) in the NOT image, calibrated with the PanSTARRS field. The decay rate is consistent with that for typical GRB optical afterglows.\n\nTherefore, we suggest that the OT is very likely the optical counterpart of EP 240416a, which is likely a GRB event.\n\n\n\n",
  "circularId": 36144,
  "createdOn": 1713339953142,
  "eventId": "EP240416a",
  "subject": "EP 240416a: Xinglong and NOT decaying optical counterpart",
  "bibcode": "2024GCN.36144....1A",
  "submitter": "Dong Xu at NAOC/CAS <dxu@nao.cas.cn>"
}