GRB 970228 was the first gamma-ray burst for which an afterglow was observed. The burst had multiple peaks in its light curve and lasted approximately 80 seconds. Peculiarities in the light curve of GRB970228 suggested that a supernova may have occurred as well.
About GRB 970228 in brief
GRB 970228 was the first gamma-ray burst for which an afterglow was observed. It was detected on 28 February 1997 at 02: 58 UTC. The burst had multiple peaks in its light curve and lasted approximately 80 seconds. Peculiarities in the light curve of GRB970228 suggested that a supernova may have occurred as well. The position of the burst coincided with a galaxy about 8. 1 billion light-years away, providing early evidence that GRBs occur well beyond the Milky Way. Afterglows decay at differing rates during different phases of their lifetimes, although most afterglows have a redshift of 0.95. GRBs were believed to emit isotropically after the burst, but this was never detected at the time of this burst’s discovery.
After the burst itself, very deep observations taken with the Keck telescopes showed the underlying galaxy to have faded away to a red shift of 695.95 magnitude. GRB 970508 was the next GRB to be detected, two months later, and revealed the cosmological nature of GRBs. It is the only GRB that has ever been followed by a lower-energy aftergl glow, and the first to have been seen in visible light and infrared light. It also provided the first evidence of the extragalactic nature of Gamma-ray bursts, which had previously been thought to be confined to radio waves and x-rays. The event was first detected in 1967 by the Vela satellites, a series of spacecraft designed to detect nuclear explosions.
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This page is based on the article GRB 970228 published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
