Gamma-ray bursts

The paper examines the constraints that observations of gamma-ray bursts can place on the nature of the burst emission processes and their sources. Attention is given to their temporal behavior, spatial distribution, and distances, as well as to their energy spectra and emission processes. It is concluded that, although none of the more than 500 bursts have been identified with any known source, there is a considerable body of circumstantial evidence which suggests that most of the common classical burst sources are single, intensely magnetic neutron stars in the nearby galactic disk, and that the few soft repeater sources are more distant neutron stars with slightly weaker magnetic fields and possible binary companions or surrounding cometary clouds. 211 refs