Use LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Data
The Gravitational-Wave Open Science Center
The Gravitational-Wave Open Science Center (GWOSC) fulfills U.S. National Science Foundation Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory's (NSF LIGO) commitment to release, archive, and serve gravitational-wave data to the broader scientific community and to the public, and to provide the information and tools necessary to understand and use the data. This resource is also a useful tool for teaching gravitational-wave data analysis to students around the world. The GWOSC site includes detailed metadata, tutorials, tools, and software to help public users perform effective analyses using NSF LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA data.
The LIGO Laboratory's Data Management Plan describes the scope and timing of LIGO data releases.
To further explore all gravitational wave events and data releases, visit the GWOSC portal or click on the following links:
Gravitational Wave Event Data Releases: Contains both confident and marginal gravitational wave event detections with additional links to individual event data.
Catalog: Cumulative set of gravitational wave transients maintained by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA collaboration. Includes confidently-detected events from multiple data releases.
Gravitational Wave Events List: Direct link to access data from specific gravitational wave events.
Caltech and MIT LIGO Astrophysics Groups
Caltech and MIT are the homes of LIGO's astrophysics research and engineering groups. Collectively, their goals are to:
- detect gravitational-wave signals from distant astrophysical sources with Advanced LIGO and its sister observatories,
- study the properties of the waves (testing General Relativity) and their astrophysical sources (neutron stars, black holes, core-collapse supernovae, the Big Bang),
- perform R&D on gravitational wave detector technology to further enhance LIGO's detection capabilities, and
- to move toward the next generation of gravitational wave detectors.
To learn more about Caltech's astrophysics group, visit their website. To learn more about the MIT LIGO Laboratory group, visit the MIT LIGO Lab website.