Swope Supernova Survey 2017a (SSS17a), the optical counterpart to a gravitational wave source

By D. Coulter, R. Foley, C. Kilpatrick, M. Drout, A. Piro, B. Shappee, M. Siebert, J. Simon, N. Ulloa, D. Kasen and 7 more. Science, 2017

918 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Photons from a gravitational wave event Two neutron stars merging together generate a gravitational wave signal and have also been predicted to emit electromagnetic radiation. When the gravitational wave event GW170817 was detected, astronomers rushed to search for the source using conventional telescopes (see the Introduction by Smith). Coulter et al. describe how the One-Meter Two-Hemispheres (1M2H) collaboration was the first to locate the electromagnetic source. Drout et al. present the 1M2H measurements of its optical and infrared brightness, and Shappee et al. report their spectroscopy of the event, which is unlike previously detected astronomical transient sources. Kilpatrick et al. show how these observations can be explained by an explosion known as a kilonova, which produces large quantities of heavy elements in nuclear reactions. Science, this issue p. 1556, p. 1570, p. 1574, p. 1583; see also p. 1554 A rapid astronomical search located the optical counterpart of the neutron star merger GW170817. On 17 August 2017, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo interferometer detected gravitational waves (GWs) emanating from a binary neutron star merger, GW170817. Nearly simultaneously, the Fermi and INTEGRAL (INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) telescopes detected a gamma-ray transient, GRB 170817A. At 10.9 hours after the GW trigger, we discovered a transient and fading optical source, Swope Supernova Survey 2017a (SSS17a), coincident with GW170817. SSS17a is located in NGC 4993, an S0 galaxy at a distance of 40 megaparsecs. The precise location of GW170817 provides an opportunity to probe the nature of these cataclysmic events by combining electromagnetic and GW observations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/89ce92fdfbc35c7d3549a36306101e813edc8c97

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. E. Quataert
5. Michela Mapelli
6. P. Hopkins
7. N. Giacobbo
8. L. Hernquist

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. B. Metzger
2. Bing Zhang
3. E. Quataert
4. E. Berger
5. D. Kasen
6. T. Piran
7. Pawan Kumar
8. P. Hopkins

Citations in the corpus

• Properties of the Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817 (2018, background): “Astronomers followed up on the prompt alerts produced by this signal, and within 11 hours the transient SSS17a/AT 2017gfo was discovered [5,6] and independently observed by multiple instruments [7–11], localizing the source of GW170817 to the galaxy NGC 4993.”
• A Magnetar Origin for the Kilonova Ejecta in GW170817 (2018, background): “…later, a luminous optical counterpart was discovered in the galaxy NGC 4993 at a distance of only ≈40Mpc (Abbott et al. 2017c; Arcavi et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Covino et al. 2017; Díaz 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Hu et al. 2017; Kilpatrick et al. 2017; McCully et al.…”
• The Emergence of a Lanthanide-rich Kilonova Following the Merger of Two Neutron Stars (2017, background): “Contemporaneous observations made independently with several optical telescopes also revealed a new source at this location (Allam et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017), which was designated AT2017gfo (also referred to as SSS17a or DLT17ck).”
• Neutron Star Mergers Might Not Be the Only Source of r-process Elements in the Milky Way (2018, background): “The Host Galaxy NGC4993 This first NS-NS merger detection occurred in NGC 4993, an early-type galaxy (Abbott et al. 2017d; Coulter et al. 2017).”
• Mass Ejection from the Remnant of a Binary Neutron Star Merger: Viscous-radiation Hydrodynamics Study (2017, background): “…signals consistent with macronova/kilonova were indeed observed simultaneously with GW170817(e.g., Abbott et al. 2017b; Arcavi et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Shappee et al. 2017;…”
• Three-dimensional GRMHD Simulations of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks from Neutron Star Mergers (2017, result): “Eleven hours after the merger, an optical counterpart was discovered (Coulter et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017; Arcavi et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017) with a luminosity, thermal spectrum, and rapid temporal decay consistent with “kilonova” (KN)…”
• The Binary Neutron Star Event LIGO/Virgo GW170817 160 Days after Merger: Synchrotron Emission across the Electromagnetic Spectrum (2018, background): “…the radioactive decay of heavy elements freshly synthesized in the merger ejecta (i.e. the kilonova emission, KN; Metzger 2017; Chornock et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017;…”
• GW170817: Joint Constraint on the Neutron Star Equation of State from Multimessenger Observations (2017, background): “…named AT2017gfo, was detected in the X-ray, UV, optical, infrared, and radio bands (Abbott et al. 2017c; Arcavi et al. 2017; Chornock et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Hallinan et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Murguia-Berthier et…”
• Merging black holes in young star clusters (2019, background): “…spectrum, from radio to gamma rays (Abbott et al. 2017d; Abbott et al. 2017e; Goldstein et al. 2017; Savchenko et al. 2017; Margutti et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Chornock et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Nicholl et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Alexander et…”
• The Electromagnetic Counterpart of the Binary Neutron Star Merger LIGO/Virgo GW170817. IV. Detection of Near-infrared Signatures of r-process Nucleosynthesis with Gemini-South (2017, methodology): “This optical transient source was variously given the name of SSS17a (Coulter et al. 2017a, 2017b) and DLT17ck (Valenti et al. 2017; Yang et al. 2017), as well as an International Astronomical Union name of AT2017gfo.”