Showing papers by "S. P. Willner published in 1997"
TL;DR: In this paper, the decay of the optical counterpart to GRB 970508 with the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) 1.2m telescope was investigated and it was shown that the decay can be well fitted by a power law of the form f ~ t**-alpha where alpha = 1.22 +/- 0.03 with occasional fluctuations superposed.
Abstract: We report on R_c and K band observations of the optical counterpart to GRB 970508 with the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) 1.2m telescope. Eleven R_c-band observations were obtained on 1997 May 12, and three on May14. The counterpart clearly faded between the two nights. On May 12 there was no evidence for variability ( 18.2. Comparison of these data points with those obtained by other authors shows that the decay of the optical counterpart can be well fitted by a power law of the form f ~ t**-alpha where alpha = 1.22 +/- 0.03 with occasional fluctuations superposed. We note that the decay of the optical counterpart to another burst, GRB 970228, can also be well fitted with a power law with exponent alpha = 1.0/+0.2/-0.5 with occasional fluctuations superposed. These two decay light curves are remarkably similar in form to that predicted by cosmic-fireball models.
33 citations