Fruchter, AS, Levan, AJ, Strolger, L, Vreeswijk, PM, Thorsett, SE, Bersier, D, Burud, I, Castro Ceron, JM, Castro-Tirado, AJ, Conselice, C, Dahlen, T, Ferguson, HC, Fynbo, JPU, Garnavich, PM, Gibbons, RA, Gorosabel, J, Gull, TR, Hjorth, J, Holland, ST, Kouveliotou, C et al (2006) Long gamma-ray bursts and core-collapse supernovae have different environments. Nature, 441. pp. 463-468. ISSN 0028-0836
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Abstract
When massive stars exhaust their fuel, they collapse and often produce the extraordinarily bright explosions known as core-collapse supernovae. On occasion, this stellar collapse also powers an even more brilliant relativistic explosion known as a long-duration g-ray burst. One would then expect that these long g-ray bursts and core-collapse supernovae should be found in similar galactic environments. Here we show that this expectation is wrong. We find that the g-ray bursts are far more concentrated in the very brightest regions of their host galaxies than are the core-collapse supernovae. Furthermore, the host galaxies of the long g-ray bursts are significantly fainter and more irregular than the hosts of the core-collapse supernovae. Together these results suggest that long-duration g-ray bursts are associated with the most extremely massive stars and may be restricted to galaxies of limited chemical evolution. Our results directly imply that long g-ray bursts are relatively rare in galaxies such as our own Milky Way.
| Item Type: | Article | 
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | MD Multidisciplinary | 
| Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics Q Science > QD Chemistry | 
| Divisions: | Astrophysics Research Institute | 
| Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group | 
| Related URLs: | |
| Date of acceptance: | 5 April 2006 | 
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 28 November 2016 | 
| Date Deposited: | 28 Nov 2016 11:53 | 
| Last Modified: | 20 Apr 2022 09:07 | 
| DOI or ID number: | 10.1038/nature04787 | 
| URI: | https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/4882 | 
|  | View Item | 
 
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