TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  43757
SUBJECT: EP260214b: GROWTH-India Telescope optical upper limit
DATE:    26/02/15 18:57:19 GMT
FROM:    V. Swain at IIT Bombay <vishwajeet.s@iitb.ac.in>

V. Vijaykumar, A. Khade, V. Swain, S. Patil, A.P. Saikia, T. Mohan, V. Bhalerao (IITB), G.C. Anupama, S. Barway (IIA) and K. Angail (IAO) report on behalf of the GIT team:

We observed the field of EP260214b detected by the Einstein Probe (EP) mission (EP mission, GCN 43744), with 0.7m GROWTH-India Telescope (GIT). We started the observation at 2026-02-15 16:28:03 (UTC), i.e., 18.40 hours after the trigger and obtained a single exposure in r' filter. We did not detect any transient in our image. The photometric upper limit is as follows:

| MJD (mid)    | Filter | tmid-t0 (hours) | Exposure Time (sec) | Upper limit (AB) |
| ------------ | ------ | --------------- | ------------------- | ---------------- |
| 61086.68614  | r'     | 18.40           | 650                 | 20.9             |

The measurement is calibrated against PanSTARRS DR1 (Chambers et al., 2016) and not corrected for Galactic extinction.

Our magnitude is consistent with other optical observations (He. et al., GCN 43745; Watson et.al., GCN 43747; Pérez-Fournon et.al GCN 43750; Russeil et.al GCN 43752; Li et.al GCN 43755).

The GROWTH India Telescope (GIT; Kumar et al. 2022) is a 70-cm telescope with a 0.7-degree field of view, set up by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) with funding from DST-SERB and IUSSTF. It is located at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (Hanle), operated by IIA. We acknowledge funding by the IITB alumni batch of 1994, which partially supports the operations of the telescope. Telescope technical details are available at https://sites.google.com/view/growthindia/.