The host galaxies of long gamma-ray bursts

This thesis presents Hubble Space Telescope (HST) infra-red imaging of the locations of 40 Swift detected long gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) with known redshifts z < 3 and subsequent analysis. Of the 40 imaged, host galaxy detections are obtained in 35 cases and upper limits in the remaining 5. For the 35 detected hosts, there is sufficient quality data to locate the LGRB to better than an HST pixel (∼ 0.13′′) precision in 30 cases. Data on the burst locations is shown, as well as on the photometry and morphology of their host galaxies. Also shown is that the distribution of bursts with respect to the light distribution of their hosts is similar in the infra-red to that already measured by previous work in the optical.