TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  21544
SUBJECT: LIGO/Virgo G298048: VISTA/VIRCAM detection of candidate counterpart
DATE:    17/08/18 05:03:48 GMT
FROM:    Nial Tanvir at U of Leicester  <nrt3@le.ac.uk>

N. R. Tanvir (U. Leicester), A. J. Levan (U. Warwick) report on behalf of the VINROUGE collaboration.

We observed the region around the location of the proposed optical 
counterpart of LIGO/Virgo G298048 (Coulter et al. LVC GCN 21529) using 
the VIRCAM camera on the wide-field ESO VISTA telescope.  
The source is clearly detected with a provisional magnitude 
J(AB)=17.5+/-0.1 at Aug-18 00:10 UT.  We note that this is consistent with 
colours that are flat in Fnu, as noted by Nicholl et al. (LVC GCN 21541)
from DECam data taken at a similar epoch.
Further analysis is ongoing.

We thank the staff at Paranal for their excellent support of these
observations.