TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 2403 SUBJECT: XRF 030723: Detection of the likely host galaxy DATE: 03/09/25 15:13:29 GMT FROM: Johan U. Fynbo at IFA,U of Aarhus Johan P. U. Fynbo (U. of Aarhus), Jens Hjorth, Brian L. Jensen (U. of Copenhagen), Jesper Sollerman (U. of Stockholm), Michael I. Andersen (AIP, Potsdam), Javier Gorosabel (STScI) report on behalf of the GRACE collaboration: "We have observed the field of XRF 030723 (=HETE trigger 2777, GCN 2320) with the FORS1 optical camera on the ESO VLT on September 24. In a deep (about 1 hr) R-band image with a mean seeing of 0.68 arcsec we detect a very faint, extended source at the position of the optical afterglow (GCN 2323). The galaxy has a position angle of about 90 degrees EofN. We interpret this as the likely host galaxy of XRF 030723. The magnitude of the galaxy is about R=26.8+/-0.4. An image of the galaxy can be seen at: http://www.astro.ku.dk/~brian_j/xrf/xrf030723. We acknowledge excellent support from the Paranal staff, in particular Poshak Gandhi." -- Johan Fynbo