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G.R. Ricker, N.R. Butler (MIT), and the HETE Team
The High Energy Transient Explorer (HETE) is the first satellite mission devoted to the study of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). HETE utilizes a matched suite of wide-field gamma-ray and X-ray detectors mounted on a small spacecraft in an equatorial orbit. A unique feature of HETE is its potential for localizing GRBs with sub-arcminute accuracy, and disseminating the localizations promptly (~seconds to ~minutes), often as the burst is still in progress.
HETE continues to detect ~80 GRBs per year, of which it localizes ~20 per year. As of March 2003, HETE had localized 33 GRBs; nine localizations had led to the detection of an X-ray, optical, or radio afterglow; seven GRBs had established redshifts. In this paper, we will present recently-discovered GRBs from the past six months of HETE operations, and discuss the properties of the prompt gamma and X-ray emission of particularly interesting HETE bursts (including GRB021004).
The HETE scientific team includes participants from France, Japan, Brazil, India, Italy, and the USA. This research was supported in the USA by NASA contract NASW-4690.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://space.mit.edu/HETE. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: grr@space.mit.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #3
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.