• DOI:10.1038/27150
• Corpus ID: 4421384

An unusual supernova in the error box of the γ-ray burst of 25 April 1998

@article{Galama1998AnUS,
  title={An unusual supernova in the error box of the $\gamma$-ray burst of 25 April 1998},
  author={Titus J. Galama and Paul M. Vreeswijk and J. A. van Paradijs and Chryssa Kouveliotou and Thomas Augusteijn and Hermann B{\"o}hnhardt and James P. Brewer and Vanessa Doublier and J.-F. Gonzalez and Bruno Leibundgut and Christopher E. Lidman and Olivier R. Hainaut and Ferdinando Patat and John Heise and Jean in 't Zand and Kevin Hurley and Paul J. Groot and Richard G. Strom and Paolo A. Mazzali and Koichi Iwamoto and Ken’ichi Nomoto and Hideyuki Umeda and T. Nakamura and Timothy R. Young and T. L. Suzuki and Toshikazu Shigeyama and Thomas M. Koshut and Marc Kippen and C. R. Robinson and Piet de Wildt and R. A. M. J. Wijers and Nial R. Tanvir and Jochen Greiner and Elena Pian and Eliana Palazzi and Filippo Frontera and Nicola Masetti and Luciano Nicastro and Marco Feroci and Enrico Costa and Luigi Piro and B. A. Peterson and Christopher G. Tinney and Brian J. Boyle and Russell D. Cannon and Raylee A. Stathakis and Elaine M. Sadler and Michael C. Begam and Philip Anthony Ianna},
  journal={Nature},
  year={1998},
  volume={395},
  pages={670-672}
}

• T. Galama, P. Vreeswijk, +46 authors P. Ianna
• Published 15 October 1998
• Physics
• Nature

The discovery of afterglows associated with γ-ray bursts at X-ray, optical and radio wavelengths and the measurement of the redshifts of some of these events, has established that γ-ray bursts lie at extreme distances, making them the most powerful photon-emitters known in the Universe. Here we report the discovery of transient optical emission in the error box of the γ-ray burst GRB980425, the light curve of which was very different from that of previous optical afterglows associated with γ-ray bursts. The optical transient is located in a spiral arm of the galaxy ESO184-G82, which has a redshift velocity of only 2,550 km s−1 (ref. 6). Its optical spectrum and location indicate that it is a very luminous supernova, which has been identified as SN1998bw. If this supernova and GRB980425 are indeed associated, the energy radiated in γ-rays is at least four orders of magnitude less than in other γ-ray bursts, although its appearance was otherwise unremarkable: this indicates that very different mechanisms can give rise to γ-ray bursts. But independent of this association, the supernova is itself unusual, exhibiting an unusual light curve at radio wavelengths that requires that the gas emitting the radio photons be expanding relativistically,.