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.

arXiv comment22 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

References in corpus (39)

• The Large Area Telescope on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Mission
• Discovery of the peculiar supernova 1998bw in the error box of GRB980425
• Intrinsic spectra and energetics of BeppoSAX Gamma-Ray Bursts with known redshifts
• Spectroscopic Discovery of the Supernova 2003dh Associated with GRB 030329
• Gamma-Ray Bursts
• Discovery of the X-Ray Afterglow of the Gamma-Ray Burst of February 28 1997
• GRB Formation Rates inferred from the Spectral Peak Energy - Luminosity Relation
• The collimation--corrected GRB energies correlate with the peak energy of their $\nu F_{\nu }$ spectrum
• Gamma-Ray Bursts in the Swift Era
• The Fourth BATSE Gamma-Ray Burst Catalog (Revised)
• Gamma-ray bursts from internal shocks in a relativistic wind: temporal and spectral properties
• The metamorphosis of SN1998bw
• Shocked by GRB 970228: the afterglow of a cosmological fireball
• An enigmatic long-lasting gamma-ray burst not accompanied by a bright supernova
• A gamma ray burst with small contamination
• Spectral Properties of Blast Wave Models of Gamma-Ray Burst Sources
• Detection of a spectral break in the extra hard component of GRB 090926A
• The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, design and expected performances
• The optical counterpart to gamma-ray burst GRB970228 observed using the Hubble Space Telescope
• GRB060218: A Relativistic Supernova Shock Breakout
• Gamma Ray Bursts from delayed collapse of neutron stars to quark matter stars
• The prompt-afterglow connection in Gamma-Ray Bursts: a comprehensive statistical analysis of Swift X-ray light-curves
• Discovery of a Transient Absorption Edge in the X-ray Spectrum of GRB 990705
• Open Questions in GRB Physics
• On the interpretation of the burst structure of GRBs
• Generalized Tests for Selection Effects in GRB High-Energy Correlations
• Highlights of the HETE-2 Mission
• Scientific Highlights of the HETE-2 Mission
• HOW FAR AWAY ARE GAMMA-RAY BURSTERS?
• On the classification of GRBs and their occurrence rates
• Intrinsic properties of a complete sample of HETE-2 gamma-ray bursts. A measure of the GRB rate in the Local Universe
• Spectral Properties of the Prompt X-ray emission and Afterglow from the Gamma-Ray Burst of 28 February 1997
• VLT and HST Observations of the Host Galaxy of GRB990705
• GRB 090618: The First Example of a Neutron Star Gravitational Collapse to a Black Hole Induced by a Type Ib/c Supernova
• A decreasing column density during the prompt emission from GRB000528 observed with BeppoSAX
• The first X-ray localization of a gamma-ray burst by BeppoSAX and its fast spectral evolution
• Evidence for a late-time outburst of the X-ray afterglow of GB970508 from BeppoSAX
• BeppoSAX follow-up search for the X-ray afterglow of GRB970111
• High resolution imaging of the X-ray afterglow of GRB970228 with ROSAT