List of gravitational wave observations
Wikimedia list article
This page contains a list of observed and candidate gravitational wave events.
Origin and nomenclature
Direct observation of gravitational waves, which commenced with the detection of an event by LIGO in 2015, plays a key role in gravitational wave astronomy. LIGO has been involved in all subsequent detections to date, with Virgo joining in August 2017.
Joint observation runs of LIGO and Virgo, designated "O1, O2, etc." span many months, with months of maintenance and upgrades in-between designed to increase the instruments sensitivity and range. Within these run periods, the instruments are capable of detecting gravitational waves.
The first run, O1, ran from September 12, 2015, to January 19, 2016, and succeeded in its first gravitational wave detection. O2 ran for a greater duration, from November 30, 2016, to August 25, 2017. O3 began on April 1, 2019. The observing run was split in two, designated "O3a" and "O3b" with the first part suspended on September 30, 2019, for maintenance and upgrades. O3b began on November 1, 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “List of gravitational wave observations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.