Speaker
Description
Before the launch of the Neil Gehrels Swift observatory, little was known about the origin of short Gamma-ray Burst. While the short duration of the high-energy emission pointed out to a merger of compact objects, proof was lacking, and nothing was known about the afterglow emission.
At this conference, I will briefly discuss how Swift, thanks to the the unique capability of autonomous repointing, early start of observations, and sensitivity, enabled the community to find short GRB afterglows and define short GRBs general properties such as energy, galaxies, offsets, environment. I will also summarize how Swift/UVOT permitted the study of peculiar and watershed events such as the kilonova in the short GRB 170817A, counterpart to the gravitational wave source GW 170817, and other similar bursts.
