TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  2903
SUBJECT: GRB 041223: J-band observations of the afterglow
DATE:    04/12/24 11:52:52 GMT
FROM:    Daniele Malesani at SISSA-ISAS,Trieste,Italy  <malesani@sissa.it>

D. Malesani, G. Tagliaferri, G. Chincarini, S. Campana, S. Covino, L.A. 
Antonelli, M. Della Valle, F. Fiore, L. Stella, F.M. Zerbi, P. D'Avanzo, 
A. Moretti, and P. Romano report on behalf of the MISTICI collaboration:

We observed the field of GRB041223 (Tueller et al., GCN 2898; Burrows et 
al., GCN 2901) with the ESO-VLT-UT1 equipped with the ISAAC camera, 
starting on 2004 Dec 24.256 (~16 hours after the GRB). The observing 
conditions were good, with a seeing of 0.6". Twelve one-minute exposures 
were acquired in the J band, with a mean UT 24.261.

The source reported by Berger et al. (GCN 2902) is clearly detected in 
our images, with a magnitude J = 19.51+-0.05, based on comparison with 3 
nearby bright nonsaturated stars from the 2MASS catalog.

We warmly thank the ESO staff at Paranal, in particular Olivier Marco 
and Jonathan Smoker, for carefully performing the observations in 
service mode.

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