TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 1520 SUBJECT: Second epoch K band imaging of GRB 020819 DATE: 02/08/23 09:03:18 GMT FROM: Jochen Greiner at MPI S. Klose (Thueringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg), A. Henden (USRA/USNO), J. Greiner (MPE Garching), D. H. Hartmann (Clemson University), N. Cardiel, J. Gallego (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), and U. Thiele (Calar Alto Observatory) report: A deep second epoch K' band observation of the 130 arcsec radius error circle of the HETE burst GRB 020819 (HETE trigger #2275, Seq_4; Vanderspek et al. 2002, GCN #1508) has been performed on August 20/21, 23:11--00:59 UT (about 33 hrs after the GRB), using the Calar Alto 3.5-m telescope equipped with the Omega Prime near-infrared camera. The integration time was 77 min. The limiting magnitude is about K'=20.5 (+/-0.5), the seeing was 1.2 arcsec. Lacking a K band photometric calibration, we used the (B-R) colors of all USNO stars (Monet et al. 1996; http://asteroid.lowell.edu/cgi-bin/koehn/webnet) in the field for a rough calibration. Assuming their colors are representative for their spectral type and assuming zero interstellar extinction, the magnitude of the candidate object reported in GCN #1510 (Henden et al. 2002) is found to have K'=17.6 (conservative error of 0.2 mag). Photometry of all objects within the HETE/SXC error circle using PSF fitting (Sextractor) did not reveal any source brighter than K'=19 which faded by more than 0.1 mag between the first epoch (Henden et al. 2002, GCN #1510) and this second epoch observation. This and the findings of Price et al. 2002 (GCN #1511) and Salamanca et al. 2002 (GCN #1512) imply that the candidate object proposed earlier (Henden et al. 2002, GCN #1510) is very unlikely the GRB afterglow.