The key role of BeppoSAX in the GRB history

Abstract

Twenty years have already been elapsed from the BeppoSAX discovery of the first afterglow of a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) on February 28, 1997. Thanks to this discovery, it was possible to unveil the 30 year mystery about GRB origin: GRBs are huge explosions in galaxies at cosmological distances. Starting from the first GRB detection with Vela satellites, I will review the main results obtained before BeppoSAX, the story of the BeppoSAX discovery of the GRB afterglow with the consequent cosmological distance determination, the main BeppoSAX results and those obtained after the BeppoSAX era until to nowadays with the still open problems and prospects.

22 pages, 14 figures, the peer-reviewed version of a contribution selected among those presented at the Conference on Gamma-Ray Astrophysics with AGILE satellite, held at Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Rome on December 11-13, 2017. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1107.1661