2017/10/16 by A. Goldstein, P. Veres, E. Burns +27 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aa8f41
Published in Astrophysical Journal Letters
arxiv created 2017/10/16 · arxiv updated 2017/10/17
On August 17, 2017 at 12:41:06 UTC the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) detected and triggered on the short gamma-ray burst GRB 170817A. Approximately 1.7 s prior to this GRB, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) triggered on a binary compact merger candidate associated with the GRB. This is the first unambiguous coincident observation of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation from a single astrophysical source and marks the start of gravitational-wave multi-messenger astronomy. We report the GBM observations and analysis of this ordinary short GRB, which extraordinarily confirms that at least some short GRBs are produced by binary compact mergers.