GCN Circular 43617

A. Kumar, D. O’Neill, B. P. Gompertz, R. Starling, M. Wortley, M. Kennedy, K. Ackley, M. Dyer, J. Lyman, K. Ulaczyk, D. Steeghs, D. Galloway, V. Dhillon, P. O'Brien, G. Ramsay, K. Noysena, R. Kotak, R. Breton, J. Casares, L. Nuttall, B. Godson, T. Killestein, M. Pursiainen, on behalf of GOTO collaboration:

We report on optical observations with the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO; Steeghs et al. 2022, Dyer et al. 2024) in response to the SVOM/ECLAIRs GRB 260204A (Pillas et al. GCN 43613
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 ). Observations covering the localisation area began at 2026-02-04 15:39:17 UT (+0.85h post trigger) and continued through to 2026-02-04 17:08:08 UT (+2.33h post trigger) utilising GOTO-South. Each observation consisted of 4x90 s exposures in the GOTO L-band (400-700 nm).

Images were processed immediately after acquisition using the GOTO pipeline. Difference imaging was performed using deeper template observations. Source candidates were initially filtered using a classifier (Killestein et al. 2021) and cross-matched against a variety of contextual and minor planet catalogs. Human vetting was carried out in real time on any candidates that passed the above checks.

No new transients that could be credibly associated with GRB 260204A were detected down to an average 5-sigma depth of 19.3 mag (AB).

GOTO (https://goto-observatory.org) is a network of telescopes that is principally funded by the STFC and operated at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Spain, and Siding Spring Observatory in NSW, Australia, on behalf of a consortium including the University of Warwick, Monash University, Armagh Observatory & Planetarium, the University of Leicester, the University of Sheffield, the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT), the University of Turku, the University of Portsmouth, the University of Manchester, the University of Birmingham and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC).