1. MIT Kavli Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 70 Vassar Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
2. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
3. Laboratoire d'Astrophysique, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, 14 Avenue E. Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
4. Department of Physics, Tokyo Insititute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan
5. Department of Physics and Mathematics, Aoyama Gakuin University, Fuchinobe 5-10-1, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 229-8558, Japan
6. University of California at Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720-7450, USA
7. Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, 9 Avenue de Colonel Roche, 31028 Toulouse cedex 4, France
8. Noqsi Aerospace Ltd, 2822 South Nova Road, Pine, Colorado 80470, USA
9. Los Alamos National Laboratory, PO Box 1663, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
10. Espace Inc., 30 Lynn Avenue, Hull, Massachusetts 02045, USA
11. Tsukuba Space Center, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8505, Japan
12. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771, USA
13. National Astronomical Observatory, Osawa 2-21-1, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan
14. RIKEN (Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
15. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California at Santa Cruz, 477 Clark Kerr Hall, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
16. Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Avenida Dos Astronautas 1758, São José dos Campos 12227-010, Brazil
17. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai, 400 005, India
18. INAF/IASF Bologna, Via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
19. Faculty of Engineering, Miyazaki University, Gakuen Kibanadai Nishi, Miyazaki 889-2192, Japan

Correspondence to: J. S. Villasenor¹G. R. Ricker¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to G.R.R. (Email: grr@space.mit.edu) or J.S.V. (Email: jsvilla@space.mit.edu).

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) fall into two classes: short-hard and long-soft bursts^{1, 2, 3}. The latter are now known to have X-ray⁴ and optical⁵ afterglows, to occur at cosmological distances⁶ in star-forming galaxies⁷, and to be associated with the explosion of massive stars^{8, 9}. In contrast, the distance scale, the energy scale and the progenitors of the short bursts have remained a mystery. Here we report the discovery of a short-hard burst whose accurate localization has led to follow-up observations that have identified the X-ray afterglow¹⁰ and (for the first time) the optical afterglow^{10, 11} of a short-hard burst; this in turn led to the identification of the host galaxy of the burst as a late-type galaxy at z = 0.16 (ref. 10). These results show that at least some short-hard bursts occur at cosmological distances in the outskirts of galaxies, and are likely to be caused by the merging of compact binaries.

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