MASTER Optical Detection of the First LIGO/Virgo Neutron Star Binary Merger GW170817

By V. Lipunov, E. Gorbovskoy, V. Kornilov, N. Tyurina, P. Balanutsa, A. Kuznetsov, D. Vlasenko, D. Kuvshinov, I. Gorbunov, D. Buckley and 23 more. 2017

224 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Following the discovery of the gravitational-wave source GW170817 by three Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)/Virgo antennae (Abbott et al., 2017a), the MASTER Global Robotic Net telescopes obtained the first image of the NGC 4993 host galaxy. An optical transient, MASTER OTJ130948.10-232253.3/SSS17a was later found, which appears to be a kilonova resulting from the merger of two neutron stars (NSs). Here we describe this independent detection and photometry of the kilonova made in white light, and in B, V, and R filters. We note that the luminosity of this kilonova in NGC 4993 is very close to those measured for other kilonovae possibly associated with gamma-ray burst (GRB) 130603 and GRB 080503.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computational Mechanics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c18e9f83a10edafa4c6df107181be871e36c3611

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. B. Metzger
2. Bing Zhang
3. E. Berger
4. W. Fong
5. D. Kasen
6. Ryan Chornock
7. Raffaella Margutti
8. S. Smartt

In Computational Mechanics

1. H. Weiland
2. Miguel F. Morales
3. S. Smartt
4. B. Metzger
5. Larry Denneau
6. D. Kasen
7. J. Guillochon
8. C. Onken

Citations in the corpus

• Three-dimensional GRMHD Simulations of Neutrino-cooled Accretion Disks from Neutron Star Mergers (2017, background): “…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) emission…”
• Follow Up of GW170817 and Its Electromagnetic Counterpart by Australian-Led Observing Programmes (2017, background): “The AT2017gfo transient was proven to be the EM counterpart to GW170817 and GRB 170817A (Lipunov et al. 2017b), but its optical light curve does not match the sGRB afterglow models.”
• The evolution of the X-ray afterglow emission of GW 170817 / GRB 170817A in XMM-Newton observations (2018, background): “…to a rapid (∆t < 11 h) identification of a relatively bright optical electromagnetic counterpart (EM), named AT2017gfo, in the galaxy NGC 4993 (Arcavi et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Melandri et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017).”
• The Combined Ultraviolet, Optical, and Near-infrared Light Curves of the Kilonova Associated with the Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817: Unified Data Set, Analytic Models, and Physical Implications (2017, background): “…2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Cowperthwaite et al. 2017; Díaz et al. 2017; Drout et al. 2017; Evans et al. 2017; Hu et al. 2017; Kasliwal et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Pian et al. 2017; Pozanenko et al. 2017; Smartt et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Troja et al. 2017; Utsumi et al. 2017; Valenti…”
• ATLAS: A High-cadence All-sky Survey System (2018, background): “It was discovered in NGC4993 at a distance of only 40 Mpc by several telescopes as soon as night fell in Chile (Arcavi et al. 2017b; Coulter et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017).”
• Constraints on the neutron star equation of state from AT2017gfo using radiative transfer simulations (2018, background): “…the first 12 h after the E-mail: mcoughli@caltech.edu joint gravitational wave and gamma-ray detections (Arcavi et al. 2017; Coulter et al. 2017; Lipunov et al. 2017; Soares-Santos et al. 2017; Tanvir et al. 2017; Valenti et al. 2017) led to intensive followup campaigns to show that this was an…”