TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 13492 SUBJECT: GRB 120716A: GROND confirmation of the optical/NIR afterglow DATE: 12/07/19 06:26:31 GMT FROM: Patricia Schady at MPE/Swift P. Schady (MPE Garching), M. Nardini (Universita degli studi di Milano-Bicocca ) and J. Greiner (MPE Garching) report on behalf of the GROND team: We observed the field of GRB 120716A (Hurley et al., GCN #13487) at the position of the afterglow candidate (Cenko et al., GCN #13489) simultaneously in g'r'i'z'JHK with GROND (Greiner et al. 2008, PASP 120, 405) mounted at the 2.2 m MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla Observatory (Chile). Observations started at 05:07 UT on 2012-07-19, 2.5 days after the GRB trigger. They were performed at an average seeing of 1.4" and at an average airmass of 1.3. We found a single point source at a position consistent the afterglow candidate reported in Cenko et al. (GCN #13489) and Xu et al. (GCN #13490). Based on the first 460s of total exposures in g'r'i'z' and 480 s in JHK, we estimate preliminary magnitudes (all in AB system) of g' = 21.8 +- 0.1 mag, r' = 20.9 +- 0.1 mag, i' = 20.5 +- 0.1 mag, z' = 20.3 +- 0.1 mag, J = 19.9 +- 0.2 mag, H = 19.6 +- 0.2 mag and K = 18.8 +- 0.5 mag The optical/NIR SED is well fit by a power-law with a spectral slope of ~1.3, typical for GRB afterglows, confirming this to be the afterglow of GRB120716A. Given magnitudes are calibrated against SDSS zeropoints as well as 2MASS field stars and are not corrected for the expected Galactic foreground extinction corresponding to a reddening of E_(B-V)=0.07 mag in the direction of the burst (Schlegel et al. 1998).