Gravitational Wave Detectors register the collisions between the most exotic objects in the universe, including neutron stars, black holes and white dwarfs. However, it actually see these events, astronomers have to observe them in electromagnetic frequencies.
A new citizen science project invites the general public to spot the optical counterparts of events registered by gravitational wave detectors.
The Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) are a pair of telescopes on opposite sides of the world, one at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia, and the other at Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma island in the Canary Islands.
Together, the two instruments complement the observations of gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO, VIRGO and KAGRA, and identify the electromagnetic counterparts of the gravitational wave sources.
Kilonovae are produced by a neutron star colliding with another neutron star or a black hole. Once LIGO, VIRGO or KAGRA detectors register a source of gravitational waves, they alert GOTO about the general region in the sky of the event.
Within 30 seconds of the alert, GOTO is configured to scan the skies to identify the electromagnetic counterpart, or the same event as visible in optical frequencies. The captured images are analysed by scientists, and also sent over to the Kilonova Seekers citizen science project.
The GOTO telescopes capture massive amounts of data, and scientists cannot possibly visually inspect all the images. The Kilonova Seekers citizen science project allows anyone to participate in cutting edge multimessenger astronomy, working with images that have not been seen by anyone before.
While there is a brief orientation, there are no special skills necessary to participate in the project, or a deep knowledge of science. The choices of the volunteers will also be used to train machine learning algorithms that can then autonomously hunt down kilonovae.
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