TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 226 SUBJECT: GRB 990123 Optical Follow-Up DATE: 99/01/26 01:01:29 GMT FROM: Jin Zhu at Beijing Obs GRB 990123 Optical Follow-Up J. Zhu, J. S. Chen, and H. T. Zhang, on behalf of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory GRB team report: "We observed the GRB 990123 OT (GCN #202) around Jan. 25.9 with BAO 0.6-m Schmidt telescope under good weather. One 40-min. exposure was made with BATC band-i filter and the very weak source at RA=15:25:30.35, Dec=44:45:59.4 (J2000) was detected near the detection limit of the image which gives a magnitude of 21.3 +/- 0.3 (Jan 25.901) using the No. 1 and No. 2 stars in GCN #204. Assuming a minimum decay slope of 1.18 (for the OT) obtained from our previous observations (GCN #217), we conclude that the source we detect here is probably the coincident galaxy found on the digital POSS-II image by Odewahn et al. (GCN #201 and IAUC 7094). This report may be cited."