TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 13856 SUBJECT: GRB 121011A: NOT optical observations DATE: 12/10/11 22:54:21 GMT FROM: Dong Xu at Weizmann Inst J. P. U. Fynbo (DARK), D. Xu (WIS), D. Malesani (DARK), A. Sodor(Konkoly Observatory of Hungary, Royal Observatory of Belgium) , P. Jakobsson (U. Iceland) report on behalf of a larger collaboration: We observed the optical afterglow of GRB 121011A (Racusin et al., GCN13845) using the 2.5m Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) equipped with ALFOSC. The afterglow is clearly detected in each of the two 300s exposures, with a mean time Oct. 11.830 UT (i.e., 8.666 hr after the BAT trigger). We found its magnitude R=21.76+/-0.10, calibrated with the USNO B1 star # 1310-0279773 (R1 = 17.84; same as calibration in Malesani et al., GCN #13853). We also carried out 2x20 min spectroscopic observations after the above photometry. There is a faint trace in the 2D spectrum but the S/N in the 1D spectrum is low. Preliminary analysis of the 1D spectrum shows very weak sign of z~0.58.