Abstract
THE observed time structures of γ-ray bursts of the type reported by Klebesadel et al.1 place an upper limit l ≈ 109cm on the typical size of the burst source regions2. If the sources were too far away and isotropically radiating then the observations would require such a high density of photons that the sources would be optically thick in the MeV region simply due to γ-γ-pair production. These considerations do not apply directly to highly beamed sources or relativistically expanding sources. I point out here that MeV photons have actually been observed in bursts, and that this means that non-relativistic sources cannot be further away than a few kpc from the Sun and therefore must be galactic.
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SCHMIDT, W. Distance limit for a class of model γ-ray burst sources. Nature 271, 525–527 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/271525a0
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