Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Short GRB Host Galaxies: Morphologies, Offsets and Local Environments

Details Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Short GRB Host Galaxies: Morphologies, Offsets and Local Environments Hubble Space Telescope Observations of Short GRB Host Galaxies: Morphologies, Offsets and Local Environments

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21540501f&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #405.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.228

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The morphological properties of short-duration gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galaxies are not well understood. Here, we present optical observations of eight short GRB hosts obtained with ACS and WFPC2 on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). These observations allow us to characterize the galactic and local environments of short GRBs as a powerful constraint on the nature of their progenitors. Using a variety of techniques, we determine the hosts' morphological properties, measure the physical and host-normalized offsets relative to the galaxy centers, and study the locations of short GRBs relative to their host light distributions. We also compare our results to those for long GRBs. Overall, we find that the majority of short GRB hosts have exponential disk profiles, and are on average twice as large as long GRB hosts. We also find that the distribution of projected physical offsets for short GRBs has a median of 5 kpc, a factor of five larger than the median for long GRBs. However, when normalized by the size of the hosts, the offset distributions for the two populations become nearly identical. Finally, unlike long GRBs which are concentrated in the brightest regions of their hosts, short GRBs are found to uniformly trace their host light distribution. These results are consistent with a progenitor population of NS-NS binaries, but do not rule out other potential progenitor models. This research is supported by Harvard University, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and HST - Grant Number GO-10917.01.

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