The recent discovery of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) coincident with the gravitational-wave (GW) event GW170817 revealed the existence of a population of low-luminosity short duration gamma-ray transients produced by neutron star mergers in the nearby Universe. These events could be routinely detected by existing gamma-ray monitors, yet previous observations failed to identify them without the aid of GW triggers. Here we show that GRB150101B is an analogue of GRB170817A located at a cosmological distance. GRB150101B is a faint short burst characterized by a bright optical counterpart and a long-lived X-ray afterglow. These properties are unusual for standard short GRBs and are instead consistent with an explosion viewed off-axis: the optical light is produced by a luminous kilonova, while the observed X-rays trace the GRB afterglow viewed at an angle of ~13°. Our findings suggest that these properties could be common among future electromagnetic counterparts of GW sources.
CITATION STYLE
Troja, E., Ryan, G., Piro, L., van Eerten, H., Cenko, S. B., Yoon, Y., … Veilleux, S. (2018). A luminous blue kilonova and an off-axis jet from a compact binary merger at z = 0.1341. Nature Communications, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06558-7
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