GCN 43880: EP260227a: Liverpool Telescope optical observations

A. Bochenek, D. A. Perley (LJMU) report:

We observed the field of EP260227a (Wang et al., GCN 43869) using the IO:O optical camera on the 2m robotic Liverpool Telescope. We obtained 5x120s exposures in SDSS r and i filters and 3x100s + 2x120s in SDSS z, starting at 2026-02-28 02:54:00 UT, approximately 6.69 hours after trigger.

We report detections in stacked images in all filters at the position first reported by Eyles-Ferris et al. (GCN 43867) and Li et al. (GCN 43868).

MJD (mid)      T_mid-T_0      Filter      Mag. (AB)
61099.12483	6.79 h         r        21.31 ± 0.19
61099.13319	6.99 h         i        21.10 ± 0.12
61099.14035	7.16 h         z        20.71 ± 0.11

Our results are consistent with the slower fading of the optical counterpart as reported by and Eyles-Ferris et al. (GCN 43875), comparing to the observations of Fu et al. (GCN 43873), Mandarakas et al. (GCN 43874) and Eyles-Ferris et al. (GCN 43875).

The photometry was obtained using nearby PanSTARRS secondary standards and was not corrected for extinction.