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GCN Circular 34644

Subject
Glowbug gamma-ray detection GRB 230905B
Date
2023-09-09T14:06:23Z (a year ago)
From
matthew.kerr@gmail.com
Via
Web form
M. Kerr, C.C. Cheung, J. E. Grove, R. Woolf (NRL), A. Goldstein (USRA), C.A. Wilson-Hodge (MSFC), and M.S. Briggs (UAH) report:

The Glowbug gamma-ray telescope [1,2], operating on the International Space Station, reports the detection of GRB 230905B, which was also detected by GECAM-C, AstroSat/CZTI, and INTEGRAL/SPI-ACS (GCN 34630, 34635).

Using an adaptive window with a resolution of 32-ms, the burst onset is determined to be 2023-09-05 15:49:30.096 with a duration of 12.3 s and a total significance of about 34.6 sigma.  The light curve comprises a single primary peak with three distinct sub-peaks, each lasting for and separated by about two seconds.

Using a standard power-law function with an exponential high-energy cutoff [3] to model the emission over this duration results in a photon index dN/dE~E^x of x=1.5 and a cutoff energy ("Epeak") of 189 keV.  The modeled 10-10000 keV fluence is 1.7e-06 erg/cm^2.

The analysis results presented here are preliminary and use a response function that lacks a detailed characterization of the surrounding passive structure of the ISS.

Glowbug is a NASA-funded technology demonstrator for sensitive, low-cost gamma-ray transient telescopes developed, built, and operated by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) with support from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USRA, and NASA MSFC.  It was launched on 2023 March 15 aboard the Department of Defense Space Test Program’s STP-H9 to the ISS.  The detector comprises 12 large-area (15 cm x 15 cm) CsI:Tl panels covering the surface of a half cube, and two hexagonal (5-cm diameter, 10-cm length) CLLB scintillators, giving it a large field of view (instantaneous FoV ~2/3 sky) over a wide energy band of 50 keV to >2 MeV.

[1] Grove, J.E. et al. 2020, Proc. Yamada Conf. LXXI, arXiv:2009.11959
[2] Woolf, R.S. et al. 2022, Proc. SPIE, 12181, id. 121811O
[3] Goldstein, A. et al. 2020, ApJ 895, 40, arXiv :1909.03006

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