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A comment on ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wave Source. Parent comment

Re:ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wav... by spuz on Monday October 16, 2017 @12:51PM (#15484665)
Given that GRBs have been detected for a long time and thought to have been a result of neutron star mergers, has a GRB detection ever led to an optical light detection of such a merger before? Is the news here that gravitational wave detection allowed us to see neutron star mergers optically or that they simply coincided with detections of the previously seen optical and gamma ray events?
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Re:ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wav... by WD-42 on Monday October 16, 2017 @01:13PM (#15484871)
Yes, there have been optical counterparts to GRBs before. What is news here is the first optical counterpart to a gravitational wave detection, along with a GRB, which gives us the strongest evidence yet that these are neutron star mergers.
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Re:ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wav... by spuz on Monday October 16, 2017 @01:18PM (#15484913)
Is there any new information gained from the optical observations in this particular instance? Did the initial gravitational wave detection allow us to capture the optical counterpart at an earlier stage than normal and therefore get more information as a result?
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Re:ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wav... by WD-42 on Monday October 16, 2017 @01:28PM (#15485014)
Yes, absolutely. This wasn't a very large gamma ray burst - as far as I know it may have not been followed up at all. GRBs are hard to localize - but the detection of the gravitational wave made it possible to search for the source quickly in a much smaller area of the sky. This got a lot of people looking, and a lot of good data collected.
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Re:ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wav... by batbomb on Tuesday October 17, 2017 @12:47AM (#15488735)
There will be more info on this and the possibility of observing it (Via Fermi), but those papers haven't been released yet.
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Re:ESO Telescopes Observe First Light from Gravitational Wav... by scrumper on Monday October 16, 2017 @01:03PM (#15484779)
Yes, in around 1997 I believe.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v396/n6708/full/396233a...

My read is that the news here is that this is the first visual counterpart to a gravitational wave detection. (It's also very strong supporting evidence for the leading theory that neutron stars merging are sources of those gravitational waves.)

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