- Troja, E;
- Piro, L;
- Van Eerten, H;
- Wollaeger, RT;
- Im, M;
- Fox, OD;
- Butler, NR;
- Cenko, SB;
- Sakamoto, T;
- Fryer, CL;
- Ricci, R;
- Lien, A;
- Ryan, RE;
- Korobkin, O;
- Lee, SK;
- Burgess, JM;
- Lee, WH;
- Watson, AM;
- Choi, C;
- Covino, S;
- D'Avanzo, P;
- Fontes, CJ;
- Becerra González, J;
- Khandrika, HG;
- Kim, J;
- Kim, SL;
- Lee, CU;
- Lee, HM;
- Kutyrev, A;
- Lim, G;
- Sánchez-Ramírez, R;
- Veilleux, S;
- Wieringa, MH;
- Yoon, Y
A long-standing paradigm in astrophysics is that collisions-or mergers-of two neutron stars form highly relativistic and collimated outflows (jets) that power γ-ray bursts of short (less than two seconds) duration. The observational support for this model, however, is only indirect. A hitherto outstanding prediction is that gravitational-wave events from such mergers should be associated with γ-ray bursts, and that a majority of these bursts should be seen off-axis, that is, they should point away from Earth. Here we report the discovery observations of the X-ray counterpart associated with the gravitational-wave event GW170817. Although the electromagnetic counterpart at optical and infrared frequencies is dominated by the radioactive glow (known as a kilonova') from freshly synthesized rapid neutron capture (r-process) material in the merger ejecta, observations at X-ray and, later, radio frequencies are consistent with a short γ-ray burst viewed off-axis. Our detection of X-ray emission at a location coincident with the kilonova transient provides the missing observational link between short γ-ray bursts and gravitational waves from neutron-star mergers, and gives independent confirmation of the collimated nature of the γ-ray-burst emission.