TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  43423
SUBJECT: GRB 260114A: VLT/HAWK-I further near-infrared upper limits
DATE:    26/01/16 11:26:08 GMT
FROM:    Benjamin Schneider at MIT <bschn@mit.edu>

B. Schneider (LAM), D. B. Malesani (DAWN/NBI and Radboud), G. Corcoran (UCD), M. De Pasquale (Univ. Messina), H. Fausey (Baylor), B. P. Gompertz (Birmingham), A. J. Levan (Radboud and Warwick), R. Z. Li (Yunnan), A. Martin-Carrillo (UCD), G. Pugliese (API), A. Rossi (INAF-OAS), N. R. Tanvir (Leicester), A. L. Thakur (INAF-IAPS), S. D. Vergani (LUX-Paris Obs.) report on behalf of the Stargate collaboration:

We observed the field of the short GRB 260114A (Eyles-Ferris et al., GCN 43396; Bissaldi, GCN 43400; Ren et al., GCN 43402; Wang et al., GCN 43404; Ridnaia et al., GCN 43413) using the ESO/VLT UT4 equipped with the HAWK-I instrument. Observations were carried out over two nights, with mean epochs Jan 15.06 and 16.05UT (13.8 and 37.6 hr after the trigger, respectively), both in the H band, with an exposure time of 30 min each.

No new sources are detected consistent with the Swift/XRT position, except for two (possibly three) objects (Li et al., GCN 43398) visible in the Legacy survey, one of which is a galaxy at z = 0.524 (Yang et al., GCN 43410).

Image subtraction between the two epochs was carried out with HOTPANTS (Becker et al. 2015). No source is detected in the difference image down to a limiting magnitude H > 24.2 (AB, 3-sigma). Our non-detection is consistent with the limits provided by Brivio et al. (GCN 43407) and Yang et al. (GCN 43414).

We acknowledge excellent support from the observing staff at Paranal, in particular Thomas Rivinius, Julien Drevon, Camila de Sa Freitas, Rodrigo Romero.