First observations of gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars

Today, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration, and its partners announced the first observation of gravitational-waves from a pair of inspiraling neutron stars. Electromagnetic emission from the resulting collision was also observed in multiple wavelength bands. This occured on August 17, 2017 and represents the first time a cosmic event was observed with both gravitational waves and light.

For those who would like to do some background reading on this historic observation, we’ve made this review article from the 2016 volume of the Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Science freely available to read.

Electromagnetic Signatures of Neutron Star Mergers in the Advanced LIGO Era by Rodrigo Fernández, Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA and Brian D. Metzger, Department of Astronomy and Theoretical Astrophysics Center, University of California, Berkeley, California and Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, USA.