TITLE:   GCN CIRCULAR
NUMBER:  33637
SUBJECT: VIRT optical transient detection
DATE:    23/04/16 23:44:45 GMT
FROM:    Priya Gokuldass at Florida Tech  <pgokuldass2020@my.fit.edu>

R. Querrard (UVI), K. Smith (UVI), N. Orange (OrangeWave Innovative
Science, LLC), D. Morris (UVI), P. Gokuldass (Florida Tech), and K.
Noonan (UVI)  report:

We observed the field of GRB230414B (D'Ai et al. GCN 33612; Evans et
al. GCN 33613) with the 0.5m Virgin Island Robotic Telescope (VIRT) at
the University of the Virgin Islands' Etelman Observatory on
04-14-2023 starting at 23:35:12 UT (T+7.4hrs). We performed a series
of exposures in R filter with a total exposure of 1080 s. The weather
conditions were mixed during the hours of observation with an average
airmass of ~1.5.

We detect the optical transient reported by others (Pankov et al., GCN
33615; Lu et al., GCN 33616; Raman et al., GCN 33618; Ghosh et al.,
GCN 33620; Moskvitin et al., GCN 33622; Malesani et al., GCN 33623;
Zhu  et al., GCN 33625, Belkin et al., GCN 33628; Agui Fernandez et
al. GCN 33629; Quadri & Strabla GCN 33630; Leonini et al. GCN 33634;
and Ror et al. GCN 33636). We confirm a slow decay or rebrightening as
suggested in earlier reports (Malesani et al., GCN 33623 and Moskvitin
et al., GCN 33622) and report the following magnitude:

T_mid       ||Exposure     ||Filter      ||Magnitude     ||Airmass
T+7.8 hrs   ||1080s        ||R           ||19.1 +/- 0.2   ||1.5

The magnitude is estimated from comparison to nearby USNO B1 stars and
is not corrected for Galactic extinction. Further analysis is in
progress. The VIRT is still in the commissioning phase.

We acknowledge financial support from NASA MUREP MIRO award
80NSSC21M0001, NASA EPSCoR award 80NSSC22M0063, and NSF EiR award
1901296. R.Q. and N.B.O. also acknowledge financial support from South
Carolina Space Grant award 80NSSC20M0054. This message can be cited.