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Published October 20, 2013 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

Discovery and redshift of an optical afterglow in 71 deg^2: iPTF13bxl and GRB 130702A

Abstract

We report the discovery of the optical afterglow of the γ-ray burst (GRB) 130702A, identified upon searching 71 deg^2 surrounding the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) localization. Discovered and characterized by the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory, iPTF13bxl is the first afterglow discovered solely based on a GBM localization. Real-time image subtraction, machine learning, human vetting, and rapid response multi-wavelength follow-up enabled us to quickly narrow a list of 27,004 optical transient candidates to a single afterglow-like source. Detection of a new, fading X-ray source by Swift and a radio counterpart by CARMA and the Very Large Array confirmed the association between iPTF13bxl and GRB 130702A. Spectroscopy with the Magellan and Palomar 200 inch telescopes showed the afterglow to be at a redshift of z = 0.145, placing GRB 130702A among the lowest redshift GRBs detected to date. The prompt γ-ray energy release and afterglow luminosity are intermediate between typical cosmological GRBs and nearby sub-luminous events such as GRB 980425 and GRB 060218. The bright afterglow and emerging supernova offer an opportunity for extensive panchromatic follow-up. Our discovery of iPTF13bxl demonstrates the first observational proof-of-principle for ~10 Fermi-iPTF localizations annually. Furthermore, it represents an important step toward overcoming the challenges inherent in uncovering faint optical counterparts to comparably localized gravitational wave events in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo era.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Astronomical Society. Received 2013 July 20; accepted 2013 September 9; published 2013 October 7. We acknowledge A. Weinstein, A. Gal-Yam, R. Quimby, V. Connaughton, and the Fermi-GBM team for valuable discussions, S. Caudill, S. Tinyanont, D. Khatami for P200 observing, and the developers of the COSMOS package for Magellan data reduction. This research is supported by the National Science Foundation through a Graduate Research Fellowship for L.P.S., award PHY-0847611 for D.A.B., and NSF-CDI grant for J.S.B. M.M.K. acknowledges generous support from the Carnegie-Princeton Fellowship. M.M.K. and D.A.P. are supported by NASA through the Hubble Fellowship grants HST-HF-51293.01 and HST-HF-51296.01-A, awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., for NASA, under contract NAS 5-26555. E.O.O. is the incumbent of the Arye Dissentshik career development chair and is supported by grants from the Israeli Ministry of Science and the I-CORE Program. D.A.B. is further supported by an RCSA Cottrell Scholar award. This research made use of Astropy (Robitaille et al. 2013, http://www.astropy.org), a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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Published - 2041-8205_776_2_L34.pdf

Submitted - 1307.5851v4.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023