The Differing locations of massive stellar explosions
Mar, 200627 pages
Published in:
- Nature 441 (2006) 463-468
e-Print:
- astro-ph/0603537 [astro-ph]
DOI:
Report number:
- STSCI-EPRINT-NO-1718
Citations per year
Abstract: (arXiv)
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 gamma-ray burst. One would then expect that long gamma-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 long gamma-ray bursts are far more concentrated on the very brightest regions of their host galaxies than are the core-collapse supernovae. Furthermore, the host galaxies of the long gamma-ray bursts are significantly fainter and more irregular than the hosts of the core-collapse supernovae. Together these results suggest that long-duration gamma-ray bursts are associated with the most massive stars and may be restricted to galaxies of limited chemical evolution. Our results directly imply that long gamma-ray bursts are relatively rare in galaxies such as our own Milky Way.Note:
- 27 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Nature on 22 August 2005, revised 9 February 2006, online publication 10 May 2006. Supplementary material referred to in the text can be found at http://www.stsci.edu/~fruchter/GRB/locations/supplement.pdf . This new version contains minor changes to match the final published version Report-no: STScI Eprint No. 1718 Journal-ref: Nature 441 (2006) 463-468 DOI: 10.1038/nature04787
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