Within the next few years, Advanced LIGO and Virgo should detect gravitational waves from binary neutron star and neutron star-black hole mergers. These sources are also predicted to power a broad ...array of electromagnetic transients. Because the electromagnetic signatures can be faint and fade rapidly, observing them hinges on rapidly inferring the sky location from the gravitational-wave observations. Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for gravitational-wave parameter estimation can take hours or more. We introduce BAYESTAR, a rapid, Bayesian, non-Markov chain Monte Carlo sky localization algorithm that takes just seconds to produce probability sky maps that are comparable in accuracy to the full analysis. Prompt localizations from BAYESTAR will make it possible to search electromagnetic counterparts of compact binary mergers.
Searches for electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational-wave signals have redoubled since the first detection in2017 of a binary neutron star merger with a gamma-ray burst, optical/infrared ...kilonova, and panchromatic after glow. Yet, one LIGO/Virgo observing run later, there has not yet been a second, secure identification of an electromagnetic counterpart. This is not surprising given that the localization uncertainties of events in LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run, O3, were much larger than predicted. We explain this by showing that improvements in data analysis that now allow LIGO/Virgo to detect weaker and hence more poorly localized events have increased the overall number of detections, of which well-localized, gold-plated events make up a smaller proportion overall. We present simulations of the next two LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA observing runs, O4 and O5, that are grounded in the statistics ofO3 public alerts. To illustrate the significant impact that the updated predictions can have, we study the follow-up strategy for the Zwicky Transient Facility. Realistic and timely forecasting of gravitational-wave localization accuracy is paramount given the large commitments of telescope time and the need to prioritize which events are followed up. We include a data release of our simulated localizations as a public proposal planning resource for astronomers
ABSTRACT In this work we continue a line of inquiry begun in Kanner et al. which detailed a strategy for utilizing telescopes with narrow fields of view, such as the Swift X-ray Telescope (XRT), to ...localize gravitational wave (GW) triggers from LIGO/Virgo. If one considers the brightest galaxies that produce ∼50% of the light, then the number of galaxies inside typical GW error boxes will be several tens. We have found that this result applies both in the early years of Advanced LIGO when the range was small and the error boxes were large, and will apply in the later years when the error boxes will be small and the range will be large. This strategy has the beneficial property of reducing the number of telescope pointings by a factor of 10-100 compared with tiling the entire error box. Additional galaxy count reduction will come from a GW rapid distance estimate which will restrict the radial slice in search volume. Combining the bright galaxy strategy with a convolution based on anticipated GW localizations, we find that the searches can be restricted to about 18 5 galaxies for 2015, about 23 4 for 2017, and about 11 2 for 2020. This assumes a distance localization at the putative neutron star-neutron star merger range for each target year, and these totals are integrated out to the range. Integrating out to the horizon would roughly double the totals. For localizations with the totals would decrease. The galaxy strategy we present in this work will enable numerous sensitive optical and XRTs with small fields of view to participate meaningfully in searches wherein the prospects for rapidly fading afterglow place a premium on a fast response time.
ABSTRACT The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) discovered gravitational waves (GWs) from a binary black hole merger in 2015 September and may soon observe signals ...from neutron star mergers. There is considerable interest in searching for their faint and rapidly fading electromagnetic (EM) counterparts, though GW position uncertainties are as coarse as hundreds of square degrees. Because LIGO's sensitivity to binary neutron stars is limited to the local universe, the area on the sky that must be searched could be reduced by weighting positions by mass, luminosity, or star formation in nearby galaxies. Since GW observations provide information about luminosity distance, combining the reconstructed volume with positions and redshifts of galaxies could reduce the area even more dramatically. A key missing ingredient has been a rapid GW parameter estimation algorithm that reconstructs the full distribution of sky location and distance. We demonstrate the first such algorithm, which takes under a minute, fast enough to enable immediate EM follow-up. By combining the three-dimensional posterior with a galaxy catalog, we can reduce the number of galaxies that could conceivably host the event by a factor of 1.4, the total exposure time for the Swift X-ray Telescope by a factor of 2, the total exposure time for a synoptic optical survey by a factor of 2, and the total exposure time for a narrow-field optical telescope by a factor of 3. This encourages us to suggest a new role for small field of view optical instruments in performing targeted searches of the most massive galaxies within the reconstructed volumes.
astroquery is a collection of tools for requesting data from databases hosted on remote servers with interfaces exposed on the internet, including those with web pages but without formal application ...program interfaces. These tools are built on the Python requests package, which is used to make HTTP requests, and astropy, which provides most of the data parsing functionality. astroquery modules generally attempt to replicate the web page interface provided by a given service as closely as possible, making the transition from browser-based to command-line interaction easy. astroquery has received significant contributions from throughout the astronomical community, including several from telescope archives. astroquery enables the creation of fully reproducible workflows from data acquisition through publication. This paper describes the philosophy, basic structure, and development model of the astroquery package. The complete documentation for astroquery can be found at http://astroquery.readthedocs.io/.
The simultaneous detection of electromagnetic and gravitational waves from the coalescence of two neutron stars (GW170817 and GRB170817A) has ushered in a new era of ‘multimessenger’ astronomy, with ...electromagnetic detections spanning from gamma to radio. This great opportunity for new scientific investigations raises the issue of how the available multimessenger tools can best be integrated to constitute a powerful method to study the transient Universe in particular. To facilitate the classification of possible optical counterparts to gravitational wave events, it is important to optimize the scheduling of observations and the filtering of transients, both key elements of the follow-up process. In this work, we describe the existing workflow whereby telescope networks such as GRANDMA and GROWTH are currently scheduled; we then present modifications we have developed for the scheduling process specifically, so as to face the relevant challenges that have appeared during the latest observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. We address issues with scheduling more than one epoch for multiple fields within a skymap, especially for large and disjointed localizations. This is done in two ways: by optimizing the maximum number of fields that can be scheduled and by splitting up the lobes within the skymap by right ascension to be scheduled individually. In addition, we implement the ability to take previously observed fields into consideration when rescheduling. We show the improvements that these modifications produce in making the search for optical counterparts more efficient, and we point to areas needing further improvement.
The discovery of a transient kilonova following the gravitational-wave (GW) event GW170817 highlighted the critical need for coordinated rapid and wide-field observations, inference, and follow-up ...across the electromagnetic spectrum. In the southern hemisphere, the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Blanco 4 m telescope is well suited to this task, as it is able to cover wide fields quickly while still achieving the depths required to find kilonovae like the one accompanying GW170817 to ∼500 Mpc, the binary neutron star (NS) horizon distance for current generation of LIGO/Virgo collaboration (LVC) interferometers. Here, as part of the multi-facility follow-up by the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen collaboration, we describe the observations and automated data movement, data reduction, candidate discovery, and vetting pipeline of our target-of-opportunity DECam observations of S190426c, the first possible NS-black hole merger detected in GWs. Starting 7.5 hr after S190426c, over 11.28 hr of observations, we imaged an area of 525 deg2 (r band) and 437 deg2 (z band); this was 16.3% of the total original localization probability, and nearly all of the probability visible from the southern hemisphere. The machine-learning-based pipeline was optimized for fast turnaround, delivering transients for human vetting within 17 minutes, on average, of shutter closure. We reported nine promising counterpart candidates 2.5 hr before the end of our observations. One hour after our data-taking ended (roughly 20 hr after the announcement of S190426c), LVC released a refined skymap that reduced the probability coverage of our observations to 8.0%, demonstrating a critical need for localization updates on shorter (∼hour) timescales. Our observations yielded no detection of a bona fide counterpart to mz = 21.7 and mr = 22.2 at the 5 level of significance, consistent with the refined LVC positioning. We view these observations and rapid inferencing as an important real-world test for this novel end-to-end wide-field pipeline.
Abstract
An advanced LIGO and Virgo’s third observing run brought another binary neutron star merger (BNS) and the first neutron-star black hole mergers. While no confirmed kilonovae were identified ...in conjunction with any of these events, continued improvements of analyses surrounding GW170817 allow us to project constraints on the Hubble Constant (
H
0
), the Galactic enrichment from
r
-process nucleosynthesis, and ultra-dense matter possible from forthcoming events. Here, we describe the expected constraints based on the latest expected event rates from the international gravitational-wave network and analyses of GW170817. We show the expected detection rate of gravitational waves and their counterparts, as well as how sensitive potential constraints are to the observed numbers of counterparts. We intend this analysis as support for the community when creating scientifically driven electromagnetic follow-up proposals. During the next observing run O4, we predict an annual detection rate of electromagnetic counterparts from BNS of
0.43
−
0.26
+
0.58
(
1.97
−
1.2
+
2.68
) for the Zwicky Transient Facility (Rubin Observatory).
ABSTRACT Advanced ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors begin operation imminently. Their intended goal is not only to make the first direct detection of GWs, but also to make inferences ...about the source systems. Binary neutron-star mergers are among the most promising sources. We investigate the performance of the parameter-estimation (PE) pipeline that will be used during the first observing run of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (aLIGO) in 2015: we concentrate on the ability to reconstruct the source location on the sky, but also consider the ability to measure masses and the distance. Accurate, rapid sky localization is necessary to alert electromagnetic (EM) observatories so that they can perform follow-up searches for counterpart transient events. We consider PE accuracy in the presence of non-stationary, non-Gaussian noise. We find that the character of the noise makes negligible difference to the PE performance at a given signal-to-noise ratio. The source luminosity distance can only be poorly constrained, since the median 90% (50%) credible interval scaled with respect to the true distance is 0.85 (0.38). However, the chirp mass is well measured. Our chirp-mass estimates are subject to systematic error because we used gravitational-waveform templates without component spin to carry out inference on signals with moderate spins, but the total error is typically less than . The median 90% (50%) credible region for sky localization is ( ), with 3% (30%) of detected events localized within Early aLIGO, with only two detectors, will have a sky-localization accuracy for binary neutron stars of hundreds of square degrees; this makes EM follow-up challenging, but not impossible.
Electromagnetic follow-up of gravitational-wave detections is very resource intensive, taking up hours of limited observation time on dozens of telescopes. Creating more efficient schedules for ...follow-up will lead to a commensurate increase in counterpart location efficiency without using more telescope time. Widely used in operations research and telescope scheduling, mixed-integer linear programming is a strong candidate to produce these higher-efficiency schedules, as it can make use of powerful commercial solvers that find globally optimal solutions to provided problems. We detail a new target-of-opportunity scheduling algorithm designed with Zwicky Transient Facility in mind that uses mixed-integer linear programming. We compare its performance to gwemopt, the tuned heuristic scheduler used by the Zwicky Transient Facility and other facilities during the third LIGO–Virgo gravitational-wave observing run. This new algorithm uses variable-length observing blocks to enforce cadence requirements and to ensure field observability, along with having a secondary optimization step to minimize slew time. We show that by employing a hybrid method utilizing both this scheduler and gwemopt, the previous scheduler used, in concert, we can achieve an average improvement in detection efficiency of 3%–11% over gwemopt alone for a simulated binary neutron star merger data set consistent with LIGO–Virgo's third observing run, highlighting the potential of mixed-integer target of opportunity schedulers for future multimessenger follow-up surveys.
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