TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 36815 SUBJECT: EP240703a/GRB 240703A: TRT and JinShan decaying optical afterglow candidate DATE: 24/07/03 18:28:56 GMT FROM: Dong Xu at NAOC/CAS dxu@nao.cas.cn

J. An, S.Q. Jiang (NAOC), S. Tinyanont, R. Anutarawiramkul, P. Butpan (NARIT), X. Liu, S.Y. Fu, Z.P. Zhu, D. Xu, Z. Fan, W.X. Li, N.C. Sun, Y.N. Wang (NAOC) report on behalf of a large collaboration:

We observed the field of the X-ray transient, EP240703a, detected by EP/WXT (Wang et al., GCN 36807), and also by Konus-Wind (Frederiks et al., GCN 36809), thus confirming that it is likely GRB 240703A, using the Thai Response Telescope (TRT) SBO node and the JinShan 100C & 50A telescopes.

Image subtraction of the stacked 5 x 360 s R-band TRT image against the PanSTARRS archival r-band image reveals multiple optical afterglow candidates, among which an uncatalogued optical transient (OT) is localized at coordinates

R.A. (J2000) = 18:15:03.89 Dec. (J2000) = -09:42:02.96

with an uncertainty of ~ 0.5 arcsec. The OT has r ~ 20.4 +/- 0.1 mag at a median time of ~ 13.9 hr post-trigger, calibrated with nearby PanSTARRS stars and not corrected for Galactic extinction of A_r ~ 3 mag.

We then obtained 10 x 300 s frames in the Sloan r-band and 10 x 300 s in the Sloan z-band at the JinShan 100C telescope. The OT is not detected in the stacked r-band image down to r ~ 22.2 mag at a median time of 16.07 hr post-trigger, also not detected in z-band down to z ~ 20.6 mag at a median time of 16.91 hr post-trigger, both calibrated with the nearby PanSTARRS field.

The presence and the decay of the OT make it an optical afterglow candidate of EP240703a/GRB 240703A.

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