TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT NUMBER: 2873 SUBJECT: GRB 041218: Optical Observation DATE: 04/12/19 06:14:51 GMT FROM: Jules Halpern at Columbia U. J. P. Halpern and S. Tuttle (Columbia U.) report for the erstwhile MDM Observatory GRB follow-up team: "We observed INTEGRAL GRB 041218 (Mereghetti et al. GCN #2858) in the R-band using the MDM 1.3m telescope under conditions of poor seeing. A total of 50 minutes of exposure centered at Dec. 19, 05:03 UT, or 13.3 hours after the burst showed a faint object of R = 22.15 +/- 0.25 at the position of the OT reported by Torii et al (GCN #2860), Gorosabel et al. (GCN #2861), and Greco et al. (GCN #2863). We use for comparison the USNO B1.0 star 1613-0027268 located at R.A. = 01h39m04s.17, Decl. = +71o21'06".0 (J2000) for which Henden (GCN #2869) gives Rc = 16.65. We note that there is considerable Galactic extinction in this direction, E(B-V)=0.63 corresponding to A_R=1.67 (Schlegel et al. 1998)." An image is posted at: http://www.astro.columbia.edu/~jules/grb/041218/ This message can be cited.