The Swift mission, scheduled for launch in 2004, is a multiwavelength observatory for gamma-ray burst (GRB) astronomy. It is a first-of-its-kind autonomous rapid-slewing satellite for transient astronomy and pioneers the way for future rapid-reaction and multiwavelength missions. It will be far more powerful than any previous GRB mission, observing more than 100 bursts yr À1 and performing detailed X-ray and UV/optical afterglow observations spanning timescales from 1 minute to several days after the burst. The objectives are to (1) determine the origin of GRBs, (2) classify GRBs and search for new types, (3) study the interaction of the ultrarelativistic outflows of GRBs with their surrounding medium, and (4) use GRBs to study the early universe out to z > 10. The mission is being developed by a NASA-led international collaboration. It will carry three instruments: a newgeneration wide-field gamma-ray (15-150 keV ) detector that will detect bursts, calculate 1 0 -4 0 positions, and trigger autonomous spacecraft slews; a narrow-field X-ray telescope that will give 5 00 positions and perform spectroscopy in the 0.2-10 keV band; and a narrow-field UV/optical telescope that will operate in the 170-600 nm band and provide 0B3 positions and optical finding charts. Redshift determinations will be made for most bursts. In addition to the primary GRB science, the mission will perform a hard X-ray survey to a sensitivity of $1 mcrab ($2 ; 10 À11 ergs cm À2 s À1 in the 15-150 keV band ), more than an order of magnitude better than HEAO 1 A-4. A flexible data and operations system will allow rapid follow-up observations of all types of high-energy transients, with rapid data downlink and uplink available through the NASA TDRSS system. Swift transient data will be rapidly distributed to the astronomical community, and all interested observers are encouraged to participate in follow-up measurements. A Guest Investigator program for the mission will provide funding for community involvement. Innovations from the Swift program applicable to the future include (1) a large-area gamma-ray detector using the new CdZnTe detectors, (2) an autonomous rapid-slewing spacecraft, (3) a multiwavelength payload combining optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray instruments, (4) an observing program coordinated with other ground-based and space-based observatories, and (5) immediate multiwavelength data flow to the community. The mission is currently funded for 2 yr of operations, and the spacecraft will have a lifetime to orbital decay of $8 yr.

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ∼ 1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40 − 8 + 8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 M ⊙ . An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ∼ 40 Mpc ) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One-Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ∼10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ∼ 9 and ∼ 16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC 4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta.

The Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is one of 3 instruments on the Swift MIDEX spacecraft to study gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The BAT first detects the GRB and localizes the burst direction to an accuracy of 1-4 arcmin within 20 sec after the start of the event. The GRB trigger initiates an autonomous spacecraft slew to point the two narrow field-of-view (FOV) instruments at the burst location within 20-70 sec so to make follow-up x-ray and optical observations. The BAT is a wide-FOV, coded-aperture instrument with a CdZnTe detector plane. The detector plane is composed of 32,768 pieces of CdZnTe (4x4x2mm), and the coded-aperture mask is composed of 52,000 pieces of lead (5x5x1mm) with a 1-m separation between mask and detector plane. The BAT operates over the 15-150 keV energy range with ~7 keV resolution, a sensitivity of ~10 -8 erg s -1 cm -2 , and a 1.4 sr (halfcoded) FOV. We expect to detect >100 GRBs/yr for a 2-year mission. The BAT also performs an all-sky hard xray survey with a sensitivity of ~2 mCrab (systematic limit) and it serves as a hard x-ray transient monitor.

Although the link between long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and supernovae has been established, hitherto there have been no observations of the beginning of a supernova explosion and its intimate link to a GRB. In particular, we do not know how the jet that defines a gamma-ray burst emerges from the star's surface, nor how a GRB progenitor explodes. Here we report observations of the relatively nearby GRB 060218 (ref. 5) and its connection to supernova SN 2006aj (ref. 6). In addition to the classical non-thermal emission, GRB 060218 shows a thermal component in its X-ray spectrum, which cools and shifts into the optical/ultraviolet band as time passes. We interpret these features as arising from the break-out of a shock wave driven by a mildly relativistic shell into the dense wind surrounding the progenitor. We have caught a supernova in the act of exploding, directly observing the shock break-out, which indicates that the GRB progenitor was a Wolf-Rayet star.

Supermassive black holes have powerful gravitational fields with strong gradients that can destroy stars that get too close, producing a bright flare in ultraviolet and X-ray spectral regions from stellar debris that forms an accretion disk around the black hole. The aftermath of this process may have been seen several times over the past two decades in the form of sparsely sampled, slowly fading emission from distant galaxies, but the onset of the stellar disruption event has not hitherto been observed. Here we report observations of a bright X-ray flare from the extragalactic transient Swift J164449.3+573451. This source increased in brightness in the X-ray band by a factor of at least 10,000 since 1990 and by a factor of at least 100 since early 2010. We conclude that we have captured the onset of relativistic jet activity from a supermassive black hole. A companion paper comes to similar conclusions on the basis of radio observations. This event is probably due to the tidal disruption of a star falling into a supermassive black hole, but the detailed behaviour differs from current theoretical models of such events.

Spectral analysis of Swift/XRT dataWe use the xspec v11.3.2 X-ray spectral fitting package to fit both a power law and a blackbody model to the XRT outburst data. In both models we allow for excess neutral hydrogen absorption (N H ) above the Galactic value along the line of sight to NGC 2770, N H,Gal = 1.7 × 10 20 cm −2 . The best-fit power law model (χ 2 = 7.5 for 17 degrees of freedom; probability, P = 0.98) has a photon index, Γ = 2.3 ± 0.3 (or, F ν ∝ ν −1.3±0.3 ) and N H = 6.9 +1.8 −1.5 × 10 21 cm −2 . The best-fit blackbody model is described by kT = 0.71 ± 0.08 keV and N H = 1.3 +1.0 −0.9 × 10 21 cm −2 . However, this model provides a much poorer fit to the data (χ 2 = 26.0 for 17 degrees of freedom; probability, P = 0.074). We therefore adopt the power law model as the best description of the data. The resulting count rate to flux conversion is 1 counts s −1 = 5 × 10 −11 erg cm −2 s −1 . The outburst undergoes a significant hard-to-soft spectral evolution as indicated by the ratio of counts in the 0.3 − 2 keV band and 2 − 10 keV band. The hardness ratio decreases from 1.35 ± 0.15 during the peak of the flare to 0.25 ± 0.10 about 400 s later. In the context of the power law model this spectral softening corresponds to a change from Γ = 1.70 ± 0.25 to 3.20 ± 0.35 during the same time interval. High resolution optical spectroscopyWe obtained the spectrum with the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) mounted on the Keck I 10-m telescope beginning at Jan 17.46 UT. A total of four 1800-s exposures were obtained with a spectral resolution, R = 48, 000, and a slit width of 0.86 arcsec. The data reach a signal-to-noise ratio of 18 per pixel. We reduced the data with the MAKEE reduction package. We are interested in the Na I D and K I absorption features since they are sensitive to the gas column density, and hence extinction, along the line of the sight to the SN. Rejecting a Relativistic Origin for XRO 080109We investigate the possibility that XRO 080109 is the result of a relativistic outflow similar to that in GRBs. In this context the emission is non-thermal synchrotron radiation. The outburst flux density is 7.5 × 10 2 µJy at 0.3 keV. Simultaneously, we find 3σ limits on the flux density in the UBV bands (∼ 3 eV) of F ν < 9.0 × 10 2 µJy, indicating that the peak of the synchrotron spectrum must be located between the UV and X-ray bands. In the standard synchrotron model this requires the frequencies corresponding to electrons with the minimum and cooling Lorentz factors to obey ν m ≈ ν c ≈ 3 × 10 16 Hz, while the peak of the spectrum is F ν,p ≈ 3 mJy.The inferred values of ν m and ν c allow us to constrain 47 the outflow parameters and thus to check for consistency with the hypothesis of relativistic expansion. The relevant parameters are the bulk Lorentz factor (γ), the magnetic field (B), and the shock radius (R sh ). From the value of ν c we find γB 3 ≈ 8.3 × 10 3 , and since γ > 1 we conclude that B < 20 G. In addition, using ν m we find ǫ 2 e γ 3 B ≈ 3 × 10 4 ; here ǫ e is the fraction of posts...

Gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows have provided important clues to the nature of these massive explosive events, providing direct information on the nearby environment and indirect information on the central engine that powers the burst. We report the discovery of two bright X-ray flares in GRB afterglows, including a giant flare comparable in total energy to the burst itself, each peaking minutes after the burst. These strong, rapid X-ray flares imply that the central engines of the bursts have long periods of activity, with strong internal shocks continuing for hundreds of seconds after the gamma-ray emission has ended.Comment: 12 pages, 1 table, 2 figures. Originally submitted to Nature on 6/6/05. Declined on 6/9/05. Revised and submitted to Science on 6/14/05. Accepted for publication in Science on 7/29/05 (this version

It is thought that the first generations of massive stars in the Universe were an important, and quite possibly dominant 1 , source of the ultra-violet radiation that reionized the hydrogen gas in the intergalactic medium (IGM); a state in which it has remained to the present day. Measurements of cosmic microwave background anisotropies suggest that this phase-change largely took place 2 in the redshift range z=10.8 ±1.4, while observations of quasars and Lyman-α galaxies have shown that the process was essentially completed 3,4,5 by z≈6. However, the detailed history of reionization, and characteristics of the stars and proto-galaxies that drove it, remain unknown. Further progress in understanding requires direct observations of the sources of ultra-violet radiation in the era of reionization, and mapping the evolution of the neutral hydrogen (H I) fraction through time. The detection of galaxies at such redshifts is highly challenging, due to their intrinsic faintness and high luminosity distance, whilst bright quasars appear to be rare It has long been recognised that GRBs have the potential to be powerful probes of the early universe. Known to be the end product of rare massive stars 11 , GRBs and their afterglows can briefly outshine any other source in the universe, and would be theoretically detectable to z ~ 20 and beyond 12,13 . Their association with individual stars means that they serve as a signpost of star formation, even if their host galaxies are too 5 faint to detect directly. Equally important, precise determination of the hydrogen Lyman-α absorption profile can provide a measure of the neutral fraction of the IGM at the location of the burst 9,10,14,15 . With multiple GRBs at z > 7, and hence lines of sight through the IGM, we could thus trace the process of reionization from its early stages.However, until now the highest redshift GRBs (at z = 6. Ground-based optical observations in the r, i and z filters starting within a few minutes of the burst revealed no counterpart at these wavelengths (see Supplementary Information (SI)).The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii responded to an automated request, and began observations in the K-band 21 minutes post burst. These images ( Figure 1) revealed a point source at the reported X-ray position, which we concluded was likely to be the afterglow of the GRB. We also initiated further nearinfrared (NIR) observations using the Gemini-North 8-m telescope, which started 75 min after the burst, and showed that the counterpart was only visible in filters redder than about 1.2 µm. In this range the afterglow was relatively bright and exhibited a shallow spectral slope F ν ∝ ν -0.26 , in contrast to the deep limit on any flux in the Y filter (0.97-1.07 µm). Later observations from Chile using the MPI/ESO 2.2m telescope, Gemini South and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) confirmed this finding. The nondetection in the Y-band implies a power-law spectral slope between Y and J steeper than. This is impossible for dust at any redshift, and is a tex...