Gamma-Ray Bursts
An Introduction by Robert Nemiroff
Who won?
Read in some detail the following (you will have to go to the "paper"
library, as these are not available electronically, or try to find
them on astro-ph):
Discovery of an X-ray afterglow associated with the gamma-ray burst of
28 February 1997 by E. Costa et al. (1997, Nature, 387, 783).
Or read one of the following reviews:
Optical/Multiwavelength Observations of GRB Afterglows by
T. J. Galama or
SWIFT: a multiwavelength
observatory for gamma-ray astronomy (to be launched in
2004).
This page was last updated on Mon Feb 23 14:04:41 EST 2004
SUMMARY: About three times a day a powerful burst of gamma-ray
radiation reaches Earth's atmosphere from space. These so called
Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), first discovered by a military satellite
program in 1960s, continue to be a mystery, although few thousand
papers were written about them in the past 30 years. We will discuss
what is known about GRBs and what lies in the future.
DO THE FOLLOWING IN PREPARATION FOR OUR FIRST MEETING:
(1) READ:
For a great introduction to GRBs read the materials from the "75th
Anniversary Astronomical Debate on the Distance Scale to Gamma-Ray
Bursts". This debate, between Bohdan Paczynski (Princeton) and Don
Lamb (Chicago), took place in April 1995. Please read all of the
following articles (you can pick up hardcopies near my office at 60
Garden St., P-317):
The 1920 Shapley-Curtis Discussion: Background, Issues, And Outcome
by Virginia Trimble
Gamma-Ray Bursts: An Overview by Gerald Fishman
How Far Away Are Gamma-Ray Bursters? by Bohdan Paczynski
The Distance Scale To Gamma-Ray Bursts by Donald Q. Lamb
Concluding Remarks by Martin Rees(2) SEARCH:
Use the astro-ph
electronic preprints archive to search for papers with the word "GRB"
or "gamma ray burst" in the title and/or abstract. Try both to see
which finds more papers. How many GRB papers were there in total since
1994? How many in each year after 1994? Do you see any trends? What
happened?DO THE FOLLOWING IN PREPARATION FOR OUR SECOND MEETING:
(1) READ:
The GRBs "afterglow revolution" of 1997 was made possible by an
Italian-Dutch satellite called BeppoSAX:
visit and peruse its website.
Transient optical emission from the error box of the gamma-ray burst
of 28 February 1997 by J. van Paradijs et al. (1997, Nature, 386,
686).
Spectral constraints on the redshift of the optical counterpart to the
gamma-ray burst of 8 May 1997 by M. Metzger et al. (1997, Nature,
387, 878).
The afterglows of gamma-ray bursts by S. R. Kulkarni.(2) SEE:
Check some of the GRBs which were studied here at the
CfA, especially GRBs 990510, 000301C and 011121. Read our press
releases for
GRB 011121 and for GRB 030329.
(3) FORESEE:
See what is coming:HOMEWORK (due our next meeting at 2 p.m., February 27th, 2004):
The optical afterglow of the GRB 990123 was observerd by the ROTSE project to be
(briefly) as bright as 9th magnitude. The redshift of this burst was
established at z=1.6. What would be its peak brightness (in
magnitudes) if GRB 990123 was located inside our Galaxy at a distance
of 1 kpc? What instrument would you observe it with?
Questions or Comments? Send me an
e-mail to kstanek@cfa.harvard.edu.