Host Galaxy
The afterglow of GRB 970508 reached a peak total luminosity 19.82 days after the burst was detected. It then faded with a power law slope over about 100 days. The afterglow eventually disappeared, revealing the burst's host, an actively star-forming dwarf galaxy with an apparent magnitude of V = 25.4 ± 0.15. The galaxy was well fitted by an exponential disk with an ellipticity of 0.70 ± 0.07. The redshift of GRB 970508's optical afterglow, z = 0.835, agreed with the host galaxy's redshift of z = 0.83, suggesting that, unlike previously observed bursts, GRB 970508 may have been associated with an active galactic nucleus.
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