Seminars are organized jointly by the Trieste Astronomical Observatory (INAF/OATS) and the Astronomy Unit of the Physics Dept. of the Trieste University (UNI/TS). They usually take place on Wednesdays at 11:30, in the seminar room (Sala Ovale) of Villa Bazzoni in via Bazzoni 2, TS.

Wed, APR 18, 2018 
SPEAKER: Silvia Piranomonte (INAF-OARoma, Roma, IT)
TITLE: GW170817 optical/NIR follow-up observations: the first evidence of kilonovae existence

ABSTRACT: On August 17th 2017 the first electromagnetic counterpart of a gravitational wave (GW) event originated by the coalescence of a double neutron star system (GW 170817, Abbott et al. 2017) was finally observed. A world-wide extensive observing campaign was carried out to follow-up and study this source. In this talk I will describe our unique spectroscopic dataset acquired with the VLT which allowed to characterize and identify the optical counterpart of GW 170817 as the first compelling example of a "kilonova", a transient source powered by radioactive decay of heavy elements resulting from the r-process nucleosynthesis of ejected neutron star matter. All the activities I will describe are expected to provide means and opportunities to all the European astronomical communities to have a leading role in the GW astronomy and Time Domain Astronomy.