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Gamma-ray bursts

Light from darkness

Nature volume 419, pages 259–261 (2002)Cite this article

Telescopes must respond quickly to pinpoint transient gamma-ray bursts and pick up their afterglow. Mysterious 'dark' bursts seemed to produce no light at optical wavelengths, but a faint signal has now been detected.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are intense flashes of radiation that originate in the furthest reaches of the Universe. The bursts are expected to be followed by an afterglow of radiation at optical wavelengths. But for many GRBs (around 60% of the total sample of less than 40 bursts that have now been followed up), this afterglow seems to be missing. Hence, they have become known as 'dark' bursts. In a paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal, Berger et al.1 report data from an armada of telescopes that reveal a faint optical afterglow from a GRB that would otherwise have been classed as 'dark'. Their observations suggest that the seeming lack of optical emission from dark bursts is in fact a result of insufficiently prompt and sensitive observations.

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References

  1. Berger, E. et al. Astrophys. J. (in the press); Preprint astro-ph/ 0207320, http://arXiv.org

  2. Waxman, E., Kulkarni, S. & Frail, D. Astrophys. J. 497, 288–293 (1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Space Science Department, SD50, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, 35812, Alabama, USA

    Gerald J. Fishman

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  1. Gerald J. Fishman
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Correspondence to Gerald J. Fishman.

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Fishman, G. Light from darkness. Nature 419, 259–261 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/419259a

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/419259a

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