Speaker
Description
In the era of multi-messenger astronomy, all-sky surveys of transient events serve an important role to provide detection and location information to follow-up instruments. The Fermi-GBM serves as the dominant gamma-ray transient detector with coverage of the entire unocculted sky. We introduce a new method to improve both the precision and accuracy of the Fermi-GBM’s ability to locate gamma-ray transients. The method been shown to improve the previously reported systematics of the official localization method. I will discuss the issues with localization, how the method attempts to overcome them, and the still existing problems that must be overcome to provide accurate and precise localizations. These efforts are vital for gravitational wave follow-up. Additionally, I will discuss the impact of our localization method on observed GRB spectra and argue that we still have a long path to fully understanding the spectra before making accurate physical inferences about them.
