TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 235 SUBJECT: Search for Potential Images of GRB 990123 DATE: 99/01/27 21:46:09 GMT FROM: Kevin Hurley at UCBerkeley/SSL K. Hurley, UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, on behalf of the Ulysses GRB team, and C. Kouveliotou, Universities Space Research Association, Marshall Space Flight Center, on behalf of the BATSE team, report: GRB 970627 (=BATSE Trigger #6279), suggested as a possible gravitationally lensed counterpart to GRB 990123 (Rutledge and Kulkarni, GCN 234), was detected by the Ulysses GRB instrument and triangulated to an annulus centered at RA(2000)=153.491, Decl.(2000)=26.188, with radius 67.841 degrees and 3 sigma width 0.065 degrees. This annulus intersects the one for GRB 990123 (GCN 222) at two locations: around RA(2000)=84.055 degrees, Decl.(2000)=+08.531 degrees, and around RA(2000)=234.866 degrees, Decl.(2000)=+37.878 degrees. Neither error box, nor the annulus for GRB 970627, includes the optical transient (GCN 206). (We note that the IPN annulus and the BATSE error circle for GRB 970627 do not intersect, nor does the BATSE error circle include the optical transient, but this is not unexpected, given that the error circle is a 1 sigma location.) We conclude that GRB 970627 is not the lensed counterpart of GRB 990123. This message may be cited.