10-16-2017, 07:31 PM
"Discovery of the century"
I'm sure some of you have seen this in the news, but gravitational waves (or Einstein waves) have again been detected, this time from a likely collision between two neutron stars. The previous detection was from a pair of colliding black holes. Some are calling this "the discovery of the century" although personally, I think it's a little early in the century to make that claim. In any case, what makes this special is that the event was also observed at optical and infrared wavelengths, which means a whole new area of astrophysics has been opened up and whatever people say, it is an enormous and extremely significant discovery.
As for Hawaii telescopes, the Subaru on MK and Pan-STARRS on Haleakala were involved in the observations. More MK observatories may have also observed the event but I'm not sure about those details yet. In the meantime, the LIGO team published this web page of useful resources at:
http://www.gw.iucaa.in/news/gw170817/
I'm sure some of you have seen this in the news, but gravitational waves (or Einstein waves) have again been detected, this time from a likely collision between two neutron stars. The previous detection was from a pair of colliding black holes. Some are calling this "the discovery of the century" although personally, I think it's a little early in the century to make that claim. In any case, what makes this special is that the event was also observed at optical and infrared wavelengths, which means a whole new area of astrophysics has been opened up and whatever people say, it is an enormous and extremely significant discovery.
As for Hawaii telescopes, the Subaru on MK and Pan-STARRS on Haleakala were involved in the observations. More MK observatories may have also observed the event but I'm not sure about those details yet. In the meantime, the LIGO team published this web page of useful resources at:
http://www.gw.iucaa.in/news/gw170817/