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LIGO Scientific Collaboration

@ligo.org

Official account of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. We detect gravitational waves! Email: questions@ligo.org

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LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 3w ago

Our next LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA webinar will explain cosmological measurements using our #GWTC5 results (paper arxiv.org/abs/2605.27227) 16 July at 14:00 UTC, with the recording on YouTube after Register for free wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/webinar/regi... 🔭 ☄️ ⚛️ 🧪

Webinar

GWTC-5.0: Constraints on the Cosmic Expansion Rate and Modified Gravitational-wave Propagation

16 July 2026 from 14:00 UTC

Background image: An artistic representation of a binary black hole merger by Aurore Simonnet

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 3w ago

Astronomers discover a 'lost world' of black hole mergers: 'It's the astronomical equivalent of uncovering an ancient civilization' www.space.com/astronomy/bl... @robleascijorno.bsky.social reports on our discoveries from #GWTC5 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

An artistic illustration of merging black holes. Inset: Black hole masses in mergers detected in gravitational waves.

Image credit: Robert Lea/LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA/Aaron Geller/Northwestern

LIGO-India @ligoindia.bsky.social · 3w ago

The latest catalogue of gravitational wave discoveries released by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA includes several exceptional events. The event #GW250114 is one such astronomical discovery, strikingly similar to the first ever detection in 2015 exactly ten years ago, but three times brighter

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 4w ago

Congratulations to our collaboration member Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw on wining the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social 2026 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship! Her lecture is at the University of Bath in November ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre... 🔭

Portrait of Dr Romero-Shaw. She is smiling.Credit: Royal Astronomical Society/Isobel Romero-Shaw

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 4w ago

Our next LIGO @egovirgo.bsky.social KAGRA webinar will our latest #GWTC5 catalog (science summary ligo.org/science-summ...) 9 July at 14:00 UTC, with the recording on YouTube after Register wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/webinar/regi... 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

Webinar
Overview of GWTC-5.0: Introduction/Method/Results
9 July 2026 from 14:00 UTC
Background image: An artistic representation of a binary black hole merger by Aurore Simonnet

Laurence Datrier @asleepywanderer.bsky.social · 4w ago

I'm looking through the classroom activities page on the @ligo.org website for a talk I'm preparing, and I love that they use this legendary cat picture for Electrostatics (possibly my favourite picture on Wikipedia) 🧪🔭

A screenshot of the LIGO website. There's a table with various topics accompanied with photos. The topic "Electrostatics" had a photo of a tabby cat covered in foam peanuts

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 4w ago

Congratulations to Dr Jane Glanzer, winner of the 2025 LIGO Laboratory Award for Excellence in Detector Characterization and Calibration! Jane is the first winner of the award for both calibration and detector characterization www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/award-e...

Dr Glanzer receiving her Noise Slayer light sabre in her Calibration Wizard hat at the recent LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA meeting in Pisa.

Image credit: Yumeng Xu

LISA Community @lisacommunity.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Congratulations to the @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA Collaboration on the release of their latest gravitational wave catalog. The Gravitational Wave Transient Catalogue-5.0 (GWTC-5) includes 161 new events detected between April 2024 and January 2025, further advancing the field of GW astronomy.

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration@egovirgo.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The @ligo.org – Virgo – KAGRA Collaboration published today a new catalog of gravitational wave events that adds 161 events to the collection, bringing the total number of gravitational wave signals detected to date to 390 🤯

Laurence Datrier @asleepywanderer.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Some recent art I made! Inspired by 19th century astronomy charts (www.rmg.co.uk/collections/...) and Jean-Pierre Luminet's 1978 black hole simulation. 🐡🔭🧪

LIGO Scientific Collaboration@ligo.org · 3mo ago

"On the application of astrophysical signals to gravitational-wave detector calibration" — an artistic interpretation of our latest science with #GW240925 and #GW250207 by @asleepywanderer.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️🐡

A poster in the style of an old Victorian science book showing depicting how we use astrophysical calibration to tune our detectors. The poster shows binary black holes (the source of our signals), illustrations of the gravitational-wave signals, the laser between our mirrors of our interferometer with a scale bar indicating the precision over which they need calibrating (they are really, really, really precise).

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 3mo ago

"Sometimes you need a hammer, sometimes you need a screwdriver, sometimes you need two black holes many times the mass of the Sun" On our latest results with #GW240925 and #GW250207 www.iflscience.com/this-wasnt-r... by @drcarpineti.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

Screenshot of article. It has a headline

“This Wasn't Really Something We Were Expecting To Be Able To Do”: Black Hole Collisions Can Now Be Used To “Autotune” Gravitational Wave Detectors

Below is a graphic of a binary black hole binary sending out gravitational waves

Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A wonderful illustration of the value of a network of gravitational-wave detectors The timing information from LIGO Hanford introduces a big shift to the inferred sky position—this shouldn't happen often, but it would make a huge difference if looking for a counterpart to a binary neutron star 🔭☄️

LIGO Scientific Collaboration@ligo.org · 3mo ago

Astrophysical calibration enables us to analyze data we couldn't otherwise With the inclusion of LIGO Hanford data, #GW250207 is the second loudest ever Using data from all three detectors makes a big difference to localizing the source 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

Sky localisation of GW240925 (left) and GW250207 (right). The pink areas are obtained using data from the LIGO Livingston and Virgo detectors. Using the astrophysically-calibrated LIGO Hanford data, the possible source location shifts and shrinks to the purple and green areas. The grey bands show the measured time delays for each of the detector pairs. Much of the localization information comes from timing,

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️@rami.spaceaustralia.com · 3mo ago

y'all! Have you seen these gorgeous infographics from @astronerdika.bsky.social @astronerdika.bsky.social @sbisco.bsky.social + LVK collab?! Neat new science on calibrating some of the most sensitive instruments in the world using astrophysical signals as the calibrator! 🔭

LIGO Scientific Collaboration@ligo.org · 3mo ago

Autotuning gravitational-wave detectors using the chirps of the cosmos! ⚫⚫🎶🎛️ Meet #GW240925 and #GW250207, two new, LOUD #GravitationalWave detections that have enabled us to use astrophysical calibration to tune our laser interferometers 🖼️ : @astronerdika.bsky.social, @sbisco.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

The Autotune problem in gravitational waves: understanding astrophysical calibration with music

1. We hear an autotuned recording (detector data) and we want the original voice recording (gravitational wave).
BUT
2. We don’t know the autotune settings (calibration uncertainty).
3. So we use a bunch of trial voice recordings (waveform templates) and apply various autotune settings to them to obtain a set of autotuned recordings.

The best match reveals BOTH the autotune settings AND the original voice recording!

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 3mo ago

GW240925 and GW250207 Events

GW240925 with component masses of about 9 and 7 solar masses located roughly 1.1 billion light-years away.

GW250207 masses of about 35 and 30 solar masses located about 600 million light-years away.

LIGO Livingston and Virgo were online and observing fine, but LIGO Hanford had calibration issues. KAGRA was not observing at the time.

The Distorted Recording

Infographic describing gravitational-wave detector calibration. Three panels show:

A compact binary system of two orbiting black holes producing gravitational waves.
A stylized interferometer being stretched and squeezed by passing waves, illustrating calibration and detector response.
A green waveform representing the recorded gravitational-wave signal.

Detectors measure tiny changes in distance, and calibration disentangles the true gravitational-wave signal from distortions introduced by the detector response.

More Detectors = Better Localisation

Infographic explaining how adding more gravitational-wave detectors improves sky localisation. On the left, two detectors (Livingston + Virgo) localise a source to a large ring-shaped region on the sky. On the right, adding Hanford creates overlapping rings from different detector pairs (H+L, H+V, L+V), shrinking the possible source location to a much smaller region.

Astrophysical calibration was needed to use Hanford data

Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Can you hear the difference between these two gravitational-wave signals? That is the effect of miscalibration This is #GW240925 with the miscalibration of the @ligo.org Hanford detector magnified 1000 times 📽️: @uofgravity.bsky.social student Elizabeth Todd 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 3mo ago

In a paper published today the @ligo.org – Virgo – KAGRA (LVK) detector network describes a new trick up its sleeve to improve the instruments’ sensitivity to gravitational waves: it’s called Astrophysical Calibration and it plays a role similar to auto-tune in music production 🎵

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 3mo ago

Our latest discoveries—two of the loudest gravitational-wave signals ever: #GW240925 and #GW250207 Using these signals, and our understanding of binary black holes, we can verify that our detectors are correctly calibrated ligo.org/science-summ... 🧪⚛️☄️🔭

The gravitational-wave events GW240924 (top row) and GW250207 (bottom row) as observed by the LIGO Hanford (left column), LIGO Livingston (middle column), and Virgo (right column) observatories. The plots, called spectrograms, show the power spectrum (energy at different frequencies) as a function of time. The signals can be seen as the increase in energy over time (in seconds) and at specific frequencies (in hertz), represented by green and yellow bands. Their shape follows the characteristic chirp pattern produced by gravitational-wave signals. The thickness and brightness of GW250207 shows just how loud it was!

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Today is World Art Day, created by UNESCO 🎨 In recent years, we have fostered dialogue between the field of gravitational-wave science and contemporary art, welcoming many artists who have visited Virgo and created works and projects inspired by our themes ✨ 📷Artwork by Pedro Torres

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 4mo ago

Congratulations to "Squeezed Light: Breaking the Quantum Limit" on its success in the Physics on Film Festival

Les Guthman@lesguthman.bsky.social · 4mo ago

AWARD! In the first festival for our new @ligo.org film, “Squeezed Light: Breaking the Quantum Limit,” we won the Finalist Award for Best Documentary at the Physics on Film festival in London this coming weekend. And it’s on the program with INTERSTELLAR!!

Film poster for “Squeezed Light: Breaking the Quantum Limit”

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Why is the @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA meeting so important? Why do people from all over the world travel to meet in person? Let’s hear it from the participants of the meeting that took place in Pisa this month 🗺️

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We had a chat with Marie Anne Bizouard, @cnrs.fr researcher, just after her election as spokesperson of the Virgo Collaboration, during the @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA Collaboration meeting in Pisa 💬 Here’s what she said about this role and the future of Virgo 🎤

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We are happy to announce that Marie Anne Bizouard, researcher at @cnrs.fr in Nice, has been elected as the new spokesperson for the Virgo Collaboration, with effect on May 3rd. She is the first woman appointed in this role, since the Collaboration foundation in the late 1980s.

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 4mo ago

Our next LIGO Virgo KAGRA webinar will discuss tests of general relativity with #GWTC4 (papers arxiv.org/abs/2603.19019 arxiv.org/abs/2603.19020 arxiv.org/abs/2603.19021). 26 March at 13:00 UTC, with the recording on YouTube after Register for free wisconsin-edu.zoom.us/webinar/regi... 🔭 ☄️ ⚛️ 🧪

Webinar
GWTC-4.0: Tests of General Relativity
26 March 2026 from 13:00 UTC
Background image: An artistic representation of a binary black hole merger by Aurore Simonnet

LIGO Magazine @ligomagazine.bsky.social · 5mo ago

New #LIGOMagazine out now! : Check it out at: 👉 www.ligo.org/magazine where you can find all editions of LIGO Magazine free to download! @ligo.org - @egovirgo.bsky.social - KAGRA

The front cover of the latest edition of the LIGO Magazine. The main cover image highlights Observing Run 4 (O4) results with the headline "O4 A cornucopia of results". The image shows an artistic illustration of a merging black hole binary with swirling reds and blues. Image by Carl Knox / OzGrav / Swinburne.

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 5mo ago

It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of Alain Brillet, French physicist, who has been one of the founding fathers of gravitational interferometry and Virgo, along with Adalberto Giazotto, who left us in 2017.

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 5mo ago

We pay tribute to Andrzej Trautman, one of the pioneers of gravitational wave theory and a leading figure in mathematical relativity, who passed away at the age of 93.

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 5mo ago

A boom in gravitational waves leaves scientists with more questions than answers: @sciam.bsky.social reports how we still have much to discover after #GWTC4 www.scientificamerican.com/article/what... by @krcallaway.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

The origins of gravitational waves. An illustration showing how a coalescing binary produces a signal. First a long inspiral, then an intense merger, finally a decaying ringdown. By Lucy Reading-Ikkanda

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Last week over 400 scientists of the @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA Collaboration met in Pisa, Italy for the LVK Meeting, the biannual gathering of the global community studying gravitational waves 🌟🌍

Annalena Kofler @annalenakofler.bsky.social · 5mo ago

So much fun at the #LVK conference in Pisa. My favorite: An illustration of the first gravitational wave signal observed 10 years ago

Large paper lying on the ground that shows the time-frequency signal of the first gravitational wave. It consists of small colored paper pieces with illustrations.

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 5mo ago

The universe is humming with ripples in spacetime www.space.com/astronomy/bl... from @space.com discusses our #GWTC4 🧪🔭