-
Article
A bright γ-ray flare interpreted as a giant magnetar flare in NGC 253
Soft γ-ray repeaters exhibit bursting emission in hard X-rays and soft γ-rays. During the active phase, they emit random short (milliseconds to several seconds long), hard-X-ray bursts, with peak luminosities1 of...
-
Article
Using ISS telescopes for electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational wave detections of NS-NS and NS-BH mergers
The International Space Station offers a unique platform for rapid and inexpensive deployment of space telescopes. A scientific opportunity of great potential later this decade is the use of telescopes for the...
-
Article
ORIGIN: metal creation and evolution from the cosmic dawn
ORIGIN is a proposal for the M3 mission call of ESA aimed at the study of metal creation from the epoch of cosmic dawn. Using high-spectral resolution in the soft X-ray band, ORIGIN will be able to identify th...
-
Article
EDGE: Explorer of diffuse emission and gamma-ray burst explosions
How structures of various scales formed and evolved from the early Universe up to present time is a fundamental question of astrophysical cosmology. EDGE (Piro et al., 2007) will trace the cosmic history of the b...
-
Article
Broadband observations of the naked-eye γ-ray burst GRB 080319B
Long-duration γ-ray bursts (GRBs) release copious amounts of energy across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and so provide a window into the process of black hole formation from the collapse of massive sta...
-
Article
A photometric redshift of z = 6.39 ± 0.12 for GRB 050904
The γ-ray burst GRB 050904, detected by the Swift satellite on 4 September last year, is one of the most distant objects ever observed. Its redshift of z = 6.3 equates to an explosion taking place 12.8 billion ye...
-
Article
An infrared flash contemporaneous with the γ-rays of GRB 041219a
The explosion that results in a cosmic γ-ray burst (GRB) is thought to produce emission from two physical processes: the central engine gives rise to the high-energy emission of the burst through internal shoc...
-
Article
A giant γ-ray flare from the magnetar SGR 1806–20
On 27 December last year, SGR1806–20, a soft γ-ray repeater in Sagittarius, released a giant flare that has been called the brightest explosion ever recorded. SGRs are X-ray stars that sporadically emit low-en...
-
Chapter and Conference Paper
One Year of Rapid, Precise Gamma-Ray Burst Localizations by the Interplanetary Network
We review the performance of the interplanetary network over the past year, emphasizing the GRB detection rate, and the speed and accuracy of the localizations. Two scientific highlights, the burst with the hi...
-
Chapter and Conference Paper
The IPN I: From the Past to the Future
Interplanetary spacecraft have been used with orbiting satellites for over 25 years to precisely localize gamma ray transients by the measurement of their timedelay geometry. The first interplanetary network (...
-
Article
Observation of contemporaneous optical radiation from a γ-ray burst
The origin of γ-ray bursts (GRBs) has been enigmatic since their discovery1. The situation improved dramatically in 1997, when the rapid availability of precise coordinates2,3 for the bursts allowed the detection...
-
Article
A giant periodic flare from the soft γ-ray repeater SGR1900+14
Soft γ-ray repeaters are transient sources of high-energy photons; they emit sporadic and short (about 0.1 s) bursts of ‘soft’ γ-rays during periods of activity, which are often broken by long stretches of qui...
-
Article
Performance of Prototype Segmented CdZnTe Arrays
The Burst and All Sky Imaging Survey (BASIS) is a proposed mission to provide ≈3 arc second locations of approximately 90 Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) per year. The BASIS coded aperture imaging system requires a se...
-
Chapter and Conference Paper
Gamma-ray bursts: Observational overview, searches for counterparts, and BACODINE
The basic properties of γ-ray bursts are reviewed. Many of these properties have been known for over two decades, although new and more detailed observations have been made by Compton Observatory in the past t...
-
Chapter and Conference Paper
High Resolution Observations of Gamma-Ray Line Profiles from SN 1987A
Supernova 1987A was a unique opportunity for gamma-ray astronomers to observe freshly synthesized radioactive material from a type II supernova. Gamma-ray lines were first detected by the spectrometer on the S...
