The most extensive inventory to date has been developed by a team of scientists.
The researchers looked at the characteristics of 69 of the identified host galaxies with the help of several highly sensitive instruments. Most of the studied SGRBs come from young, actively star-forming galaxies.
The astronomer found that there were more SGRBs at earlier times when the universe was younger. There are questions as to how they were able to travel so far away after they were spotted outside their host galaxies.
"This is the largest catalog of host galaxies to ever exist, so we expect it to be the gold standard for many years to come," said the graduate student who led the study. The field needed to push our understanding of these fantastic events and what happens to stars after they die by building this catalog and having enough host galaxies to see patterns.
Two papers will be published about the new catalog. The papers are going to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The team calls its catalog BRIGHT because it's one of the best places in the world to investigate SGRBs. BRIGHT's data and modeling products are public.
Nugent is a graduate student in physics and astronomy at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She is assisted by an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Weinberg and a key member of CIERA.
Future comparisons can be benchmarked.
There are flashes of intense gamma-ray light when there are two neutron stars colliding. The optical light can continue for hours before it fades below detection levels. Each year there are a dozen detected and pinpointed SGRBs, which are some of the most Luminous explosions in the Universe. They are the only way to study and understand a large group of merging stars.
Astronomers have spent the last 17 years trying to understand which galaxies produce the powerful afterglows. The environmental conditions needed to produce SGRBs can be understood by stars within a galaxy. Only one SGRB has a confirmed neutron-star merger origin, as it was detected just seconds after the initial detection of the binaries.
The next generation of observatories will be able to detect mergers of stars at the same distance as we do now. Our catalog will serve as a benchmark for future detections.
The catalog can make impacts beyond just a single class of Transients. With the wealth of data and results presented in the catalog, I believe a variety of research projects will make use of it.
Insight into the nature of the stars.
Several highly sensitive instruments were used to create the catalog. The team used data from two NASA telescopes.
Prior to these new studies, astronomer characterized only a few dozen SGRBs. There are more samples in the new catalog than there are in the previous one. The catalog shows that the host galaxies can be young or old and approaching death. Many of the neutron-star systems form quickly in a wide range of environments. The data from the catalog will help scientists understand when precious metals were created in the universe.
The younger SGRBs we found in younger host galaxies were formed in a starburst and are so tightly bound that they can merge very fast. We have not been able to witness the merging of neutron stars until now. Evidence shows that the stars in the older galaxies may have taken a longer time to form a binaries or a system that was further apart. Those took a long time to amalgamate.
There's a potential of the JWST.
With the ability to detect the faintest host galaxies from very early times in the universe, NASA's new observatory is poised to further advance the understanding of neutron star mergers.
Nugent said that he was most excited about the possibility of using JWST to probe deeper into the homes of these rare, exploded events. A missing population and a link to the early universe could be revealed byJWST's ability to observe faint galaxies in the universe.
It was gratifying to be able to pass the torch onto the next generation of researchers, as I started observations ten years ago. Thanks to the young researchers who took this study to the next level, years of work came to life in this catalog.
Iopscience.iop.org has more information about Short GRB Host Galaxies I.
Iopscience.iop.org has an article on short GRB Host Galaxies II.
Journal information: Astrophysical Journal
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