Breaking: the First Light from Two Neutron Stars Merging (1 of 7) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Breaking: the First Light from Two Neutron Stars Merging (1 of 7)

Caption

In just a few days, the electromagnetic counterpart to merging neutron stars evolved from bright and blue to faint and red. The red evolution is robust proof that over ten thousand earth masses of heavy elements are synthesized here. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Oct. 16, 2017, online issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by M.M. Kasliwal at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, and colleagues was titled, 'Illuminating gravitational waves: A concordant picture of photons from a neutron star merger.'

Credit

Robert Hurt (Caltech), Ryan Lau (Caltech), Leo Singer (NASA), Mansi Kasliwal (Caltech) and the GROWTH collaboration

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