The Unusually Long Duration Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 000911: Discovery of the Afterglow and Host Galaxy^*

P. A. Price^1,2, E. Berger¹, S. R. Kulkarni¹, S. G. Djorgovski¹, D. W. Fox¹, A. Mahabal¹, K. Hurley³, J. S. Bloom¹, D. A. Frail⁴, T. J. Galama¹, F. A. Harrison¹, G. Morrison⁵, D. E. Reichart¹, S. A. Yost¹, R. Sari⁶, T. S. Axelrod², T. Cline⁷, S. Golenetskii⁸, E. Mazets⁸, B. P. Schmidt², and J. Trombka⁷

© 2002. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 573, Number 1 Citation P. A. Price et al 2002 ApJ 573 85 DOI 10.1086/340585

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¹ Palomar Observatory, MS 105-24, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

² Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mount Stromlo Observatory, Cotter Road, Weston, ACT 2611, Australia

³ Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720

⁴ National Radio Astronomy Observatory, P.O. Box O, Socorro, NM 87801

⁵ Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, MS 100-22, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

⁶ Theoretical Astrophysics, MS 130-33, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

⁷ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771

⁸ Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, Saint Petersburg 194021, Russia

Dates

Received 2001 October 12
Accepted 2002 March 10

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Abstract

Of all the well-localized gamma-ray bursts, GRB 000911 has the longest duration (T₉₀ = 500 s) and ranks in the top 1% of BATSE bursts for fluence. Here we report the discovery of the afterglow of this unique burst. In order to simultaneously fit our radio and optical observations, we are required to invoke a model involving a hard electron distribution, p ~ 1.5, and a jet-break time less than 1.5 days. A spectrum of the host galaxy taken 111 days after the burst reveals a single emission line, interpreted as [O II] at a redshift z = 1.0585, and a continuum break that we interpret as the Balmer limit at this redshift. Despite the long T₉₀, the afterglow of GRB 000911 is not unusual in any other way when compared to the set of afterglows studied to date. We conclude that the duration of the GRB plays little part in determining the physics of the afterglow.

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Footnotes

*
Partially based on observations obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated by the California Association for Research in Astronomy, a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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