Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
1999-02-19
Nature398:389-394,1999
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Revised version (27 Feb 99). 19 pages, 3 figures. Original version submitted to Nature 2/11/99. Uses macros reforder.sty and c
Scientific paper
10.1038/18821
Afterglow, or long-lived emission, has now been detected from about a dozen well-positioned gamma-ray bursts. Distance determinations made by measuring optical emission lines from the host galaxy, or absorption lines in the afterglow spectrum, place the burst sources at significant cosmological distances, with redshifts ranging from ~1--3. The energy required to produce the bright gamma-ray flashes is enormous: up to ~10^{53} erg or 10 percent of the rest mass energy of a neutron star, if the emission is isotropic. Here we present the discovery of the optical afterglow and the redshift of GRB 990123, the brightest well-localized GRB to date. With our measured redshift of >1.6, the inferred isotropic energy release exceeds the rest mass of a neutron star thereby challenging current theoretical models for the origin of GRBs. We argue that the optical and IR afterglow measurements reported here may provide the first observational evidence of beaming in a GRB, thereby reducing the required energetics to a level where stellar death models are still tenable.
Armus Lee
Bloom Josh S.
Chaffee Frederic
Costa Edgar
Djorgovski Stanislav G.
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