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

D A Coulter; R J Foley; C D Kilpatrick; M R Drout; A L Piro; B J Shappee; M R Siebert; J D Simon; N Ulloa; D Kasen; B F Madore; A Murguia-Berthier; Y-C Pan; J X Prochaska; E Ramirez-Ruiz; A Rest; C Rojas-Bravo

doi:10.1126/science.aap9811

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

Science. 2017 Dec 22;358(6370):1556-1558. doi: 10.1126/science.aap9811. Epub 2017 Oct 16.

Authors

D A Coulter¹, R J Foley², C D Kilpatrick², M R Drout³, A L Piro³, B J Shappee^{3

4}, M R Siebert², J D Simon³, N Ulloa⁵, D Kasen^{6

7}, B F Madore^{3

8}, A Murguia-Berthier², Y-C Pan², J X Prochaska², E Ramirez-Ruiz^{2

9}, A Rest^{10

11}, C Rojas-Bravo²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. dcoulter@ucsc.edu.
² Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
³ Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA.
⁴ Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai'i, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
⁵ Departamento de Física y Astronomía, Universidad de La Serena, La Serena, Chile.
⁶ Nuclear Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁷ Departments of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁸ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
⁹ Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁰ Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
¹¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.

PMID: 29038368
DOI: 10.1126/science.aap9811

Abstract

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.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.