Loading…

A photometric redshift of z = 6.39 ± 0.12 for GRB 050904

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows are the most brilliant transient events in the Universe. Both the bursts themselves and their afterglows have been predicted to be visible out to redshifts of z 20, and therefore to be powerful probes of the early Universe. The burst GRB 000131, at z = 4....

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature 2006-03, Vol.440 (7081), p.181-183
Main Authors: Haislip, J. B, Barthelmy, S, Burrows, D. N, Williams, G. G, Moles, M, Reichart, D. E, Bartelme, J. W, Wijers, R. A. M. J, Chapman, R, Fox, D. B, Hudec, R, Fruchter, A. S, Kubanek, P, Cypriano, E. S, Cenko, S. B, Ugarte, P, Zdarowicz, C. M, Price, P. A, Jelinek, M, Levan, A, Priddey, R, Alfaro, E, Soderberg, A. M, Moon, D. S, Klose, S, Kouveliotou, C, Rol, E, Ivarsen, K. M, Hartmann, D. H, Kasliwal, M. M, Crain, J. A, LaCluyze, A, Harrison, F. A, Maturana, D, Vitek, S, Jarvis, M. J, Rhoads, J, Canterna, R, Clemens, J. C, Bayliss, M. B, Kulkarni, S. R, Kumar, N. D, Schmidt, B. P, Figueredo, E, Lamb, D. Q, Bersier, D, Fernandez, A. J. M, Graham, J, Postigo, A. de Ugarte, MacLeod, C. L, Prada, F, Nysewander, M. C, Tanvir, N, Kirschbrown, J. R, Foster, A. C, Guziy, S, Pizarro, S, Castro-Tirado, A. J, Gehrels, N, Henden, A. A, Park, H.-S, Mack, C. E, Alvarez, A, Gal-Yam, A, Gorosabel, J, O'Brien, P, Evans, C. R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and their afterglows are the most brilliant transient events in the Universe. Both the bursts themselves and their afterglows have been predicted to be visible out to redshifts of z 20, and therefore to be powerful probes of the early Universe. The burst GRB 000131, at z = 4.50, was hitherto the most distant such event identified. Here we report the discovery of the bright near-infrared afterglow of GRB 050904 (ref. 4). From our measurements of the near-infrared afterglow, and our failure to detect the optical afterglow, we determine the photometric redshift of the burst to be z = 6.39 - 0.12 + 0.11 (refs 5-7). Subsequently, it was measured spectroscopically to be z = 6.29 ± 0.01, in agreement with our photometric estimate. These results demonstrate that GRBs can be used to trace the star formation, metallicity, and reionization histories of the early Universe.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
1476-4679
DOI:10.1038/nature04552