• DOI:10.1038/nature04142
• Corpus ID: 4395679

A short γ-ray burst apparently associated with an elliptical galaxy at redshift z = 0.225

@article{Gehrels2005AS,
  title={A short $\gamma$-ray burst apparently associated with an elliptical galaxy at redshift z = 0.225},
  author={Neil Gehrels and Craig L. Sarazin and P. T. O’Brien and B. Zhang and Louis M. Barbier and Scott Douglas Barthelmy and A. J. Blustin and David N. Burrows and John K. Cannizzo and Jay R. Cummings and M. R. Goad and Stephen T. Holland and Cheryl Hurkett and Jamie A. Kennea and Andrew J. Levan and Craig B. Markwardt and Keith O. Mason and P{\'e}ter M{\'e}sz{\'a}ros and M J Page and David M. Palmer and Evert Rol and Takanori Sakamoto and Richard Willingale and Leonardo Angelini and Andrew P. Beardmore and Patricia T. Boyd and A. A. Breeveld and Sergio Campana and Margaret Mcmath Chester and Guido L. Chincarini and Lynn R. Cominsky and G Cusumano and Massimiliano de Pasquale and Edward E. Fenimore and Paolo Giommi and Caryl Gronwall and Dirk Grupe and J. E. Hill and Dean Alan Hinshaw and Jens Hjorth and Derek D. Hullinger and Kevin Hurley and S. Klose and S. Kobayashi and Chryssa Kouveliotou and H A Krimm and Valeria Mangano and F. E. Marshall and Katherine E. McGowan and Alberto Moretti and Richard F. Mushotzky and Kazuhiro Nakazawa and Jay Norris and J A Nousek and Julian P. Osborne and Kim L. Page and Ann Marie Parsons and S. K. Patel and Matteo Perri and Tracey Poole and Patrizia Romano and P. W. A. Roming and Simon R. Rosen and Goro Sato and Patricia Schady and Alan P. Smale and Jesper Sollerman and Rhaana L. C. Starling and Martin D. Still and M. Suzuki and Gianpiero Tagliaferri and T. Takahashi and Makoto S. Tashiro and Jack Tueller and Alan A. Wells and Nicholas E. White and R. A. M. J. Wijers},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2005},
  volume={437},
  pages={851-854}
}

• N. Gehrels, C. Sarazin, +74 authors R. Wijers
• Published 31 May 2005
• Physics
• Nature

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) come in two classes: long (> 2 s), soft-spectrum bursts and short, hard events. Most progress has been made on understanding the long GRBs, which are typically observed at high redshift (z ≈ 1) and found in subluminous star-forming host galaxies. They are likely to be produced in core-collapse explosions of massive stars. In contrast, no short GRB had been accurately (< 10″) and rapidly (minutes) located. Here we report the detection of the X-ray afterglow from—and the localization of—the short burst GRB 050509B. Its position on the sky is near a luminous, non-star-forming elliptical galaxy at a redshift of 0.225, which is the location one would expect if the origin of this GRB is through the merger of neutron-star or black-hole binaries. The X-ray afterglow was weak and faded below the detection limit within a few hours; no optical afterglow was detected to stringent limits, explaining the past difficulty in localizing short GRBs.