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Science 3 November 2000:
Vol. 290. no. 5493, pp. 955 - 958
DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5493.955
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Reports

Observation of X-ray Lines from a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB991216): Evidence of Moving Ejecta from the Progenitor

L. Piro,1* G. Garmire,2 M. Garcia,3 G. Stratta,1 E. Costa,1 M. Feroci,1 P. Mészáros,2 M. Vietri,4 H. Bradt,5 D. Frail,6 F. Frontera,7 J. Halpern,8 J. Heise,9 K. Hurley,10 N. Kawai,11 R. M. Kippen,12 F. Marshall,13 T. Murakami,14 V. V. Sokolov,15 T. Takeshima,16 A. Yoshida11

We report on the discovery of two emission features observed in the x-ray spectrum of the afterglow of the gamma-ray burst (GRB) of 16 December 1999 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These features are identified with the Lyalpha line and the narrow recombination continuum by hydrogenic ions of iron at a redshift z = 1.00 ± 0.02, providing an unambiguous measurement of the distance of a GRB. Line width and intensity imply that the progenitor of the GRB was a massive star system that ejected, before the GRB event, a quantity of iron ~0.01 of the mass of the sun at a velocity ~0.1 of the speed of light, probably by a supernova explosion.

1 Istituto Astrofisica Spaziale, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Via Fosso del Cavaliere, 00133 Roma, Italy.
2 Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 525 Davey Lab, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
3 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
4 Department of Physics, Universita' Roma Tre, Via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy.
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
6 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 1003 Lopezville Road, Socorro, NM 87801, USA.
7 Istituto Tecnologie e Studio Radiazioni Extraterrestri/CNR, Via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy.
8 Department of Astrophysics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA.
9 Space Research Organization in the Netherlands, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, Netherlands.
10 University of California Space Science Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
11 Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-Shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
12 University of Alabama, NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL 35899, USA.
13 NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 661, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
14 Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 229-8510, Japan.
15 Russian Academy of Sciences, Special Astrophysical Observatory Nizhnij Arkhyz, Zelenchukskaya, Karachaevo-Cherkesia 369167, Russia.
16 NASDA, National Space Development Agency of Japan, WTC Building 2-4-1, Hamamatsu-cho Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-60, Japan.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: piro{at}ias.rm.cnr.it

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Gamma-Ray Bursts: Accumulating Afterglow Implications, Progenitor Clues, and Prospects.
P. Mészáros (2001)
Science 291, 79-84
   Abstract »    Full Text »
Discovery of a Transient Absorption Edge in the X-ray Spectrum of GRB 990705.
L. Amati, F. Frontera, M. Vietri, J. J. M. i.'t Zand, P. Soffitta, E. Costa, S. D. Sordo, E. Pian, L. Piro, L. A. Antonelli, et al. (2000)
Science 290, 953-955
   Abstract »    Full Text »


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