GW170817, the first evidence of kilonovae existence. The Italian follow-up observations of GW triggers in the Multi-Messenger Era
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 the 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. In this talk, I will present the activities we carried out to optimize the response of the Italian GRAWITA network of facilities to expected GW triggers and our results for past (O1 and O2) and current (O3) observing runs. All these activities are expected to provide means and opportunities to the Italian and European astronomical communities to have a leading role in the GW and Time Domain Astronomy in the future.
Friday, 21 February 2020, ore 14:30 — Sala Wataghin