{
  "eventId": "EP260920a",
  "createdOn": 1790165395733,
  "submitter": "Emeric Le Floc'h at CEA-Saclay <emeric.lefloch@cea.fr>",
  "eventType": [
    "X-ray Transient"
  ],
  "circularId": 45702,
  "submittedHow": "web",
  "format": "text/plain",
  "body": "J. An (NAOC), D. Xu (NAOC), G. Pugliese (API), D. B. Malesani (DAWN/NBI and Radboud), G. Corcoran (UCD), V. D’Elia (ASI/SSDC), M. Garnichey (LUX-Paris Obs.), L. Izzo (INAF/OAC), E. Le Floc’h (CEA/Irfu), A. Saccardi (CEA/Irfu), B. Schneider (LAM), N. R. Tanvir (U. Leicester), A. L. Thakur (INAF/IAPS), S. D. Vergani (LUX-Paris Obs.), report on behalf of the Stargate collaboration:\n\nWe obtained a second imaging observation of the field of EP260920a (Ni et al., GCN 45649) using the ESO/VLT UT4 (Yepun) equipped with the HAWK-I instrument. Data acquisition started on 2026-09-22 at 02:56:07 UT, i.e. 2.12 days after the trigger. A total of 20 x 60 s J-band frames were obtained.\n\nThe previously identified candidate afterglow (An et al., GCN 45679) is still detected and has faded compared to our earlier measurement. We measure the following magnitude, calibrated against 2MASS and not corrected for Galactic extinction:\n\nJ = 21.57 +/- 0.06 (Vega).\n\nThe fading (corresponding to a decay slope of 1.22 +/- 0.14) allows us to conclude that this object is the afterglow of EP260920a.\n\nWe acknowledge excellent support from the ESO staff in Paranal, in particular Carlos La Fuente, Francesca Lucertini, Fuyan Bian, and Robert De Rosa.\n\n",
  "subject": "EP260920a: VLT/HAWK-I near-infrared counterpart confirmation"
}