SPECTRAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE REDSHIFT OF THE OPTICAL COUNTERPART TO THE GAMMA-RAY BURST OF 8 MAY 1997

Brief, intense bursts of gamma-rays occur approximately daily from ran dom directions in space, but their origin has remained unknown since t heir initial detection almost 25 years ago(1). Arguments based on thei r observed isotropy and apparent brightness distribution(2) are not su fficient to constrain the location of the bursts to a local(3) or cosm ological origin(4). The recent detection of a counterpart to a gamma-r ay burst at other wavelengths(5,6) has therefore raised the hope that the sources of these energetic events might soon be revealed. Here we report spectroscopic observations of the possible optical counterpart( 7,8) to the gamma-ray burst GRB970508. The spectrum is mostly featurel ess, except for a few prominent absorption lines which we attribute to the presence of an absorption system along the line of sight at redsh ift z = 0.835. Coupled with the absence of Lyman-alpha forest features in the spectra, our results imply that the optical transient lies at 0.835 less than or equal to z less than or similar to 2.3. If the opti cal transient is indeed the counterpart of GRB970508, our results prov ide the first direct limits on the distance to a gamma-ray burst, conf irming that at least some of these events lie at cosmological distance s, and are thus highly energetic.