TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  40207
SUBJECT: EP250421a: NOT optical observations
DATE:    25/04/22 13:46:09 GMT
FROM:    Daniele B. Malesani at IMAPP / Radboud University <d.malesani@astro.ru.nl>

D. B. Malesani (DAWN/NBI and Radboud), J. Sanchez-Sierras (Radboud), A. Martin-Carrillo (UCD), J. Quirola-Vásquez (Radboud), P. G. Jonker (Radboud), A. J. Levan (Radboud and Warwick), D. Xu (NAOC), Z. P. Zhu (NAOC), H. Dawson (IAP Potsdam), report on behalf of a larger collaboration:

We observed the field of the fast X-ray transient EP250421a (Zhao et al., GCN 40198) using the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) equipped with the ALFOSC camera. Observations were carried out under poor seeing (1.8") in the r and z filters (3x300 s, each) starting on 2025-04-21 at 22:04:12 UT (5.79 hr after the trigger).

At the location of the optical counterpart reported by Lee et al. (GCN 40192), Fu et al. (GCN 40193), and Liu et al. (GCN 40197), also consistent with the EP/FXT and Swift/XRT positions (Zhao et al., GCN 40198; Salvaggio et al., GCN 40204), we only marginally detect a source with r = 23.8 +/- 0.3 (AB), calibrated against nearby Pan-STARRS objects.