The extraordinary detection of the event GW170817/GRB170817A opens a new era in multi-messenger astrophysics.

by Dr Elena Moretti (Max Planck Institute for Physics, Munich)

Thursday 19 Oct 2017, 11:30 → 12:30 Europe/Madrid

IFAE Seminar Room

Last August 17th at 12:41:06 UTC the confirmation of the origin of the short Gamma-Ray Bursts (SGRBs) has come from the independent detection of the merging of a Neutron Star - Neutron Star (NS-NS) binary system through Gravitation Wave (GW) and ElectroMagnetic (EM) wave. The first done by the LIGO-VIRGO detectors and the second done by the Fermi-GBM detectors. Following these 2 observations came a large multi-wavelength campaign to observe the region of the sky of the event. About 10h after, a bright optical afterglow was detected by One-Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1-m Swope Telescope, which gave the precise location of the event in the galaxy NGC4993 about 40 Mpc away from the earth. The EM signal from this event was, later on, detected in the full EM spectrum: from radio to gamma-ray. I will report on this event that opens a new era in the multi-messenger and multi-wavelength astrophysics.