AGILE Observations of the Gravitational Wave Event GW150914

Understand

We report the results of an extensive search in the AGILE data for a gamma-ray counterpart of the LIGO gravitational wave event GW150914.

• Currently in spinning mode, AGILE has the potential of covering with its gamma-ray instrument 80 % of the sky more than 100 times a day.
• It turns out that AGILE came within a minute from the event time of observing the accessible GW150914 localization region.
• Interestingly, the gamma-ray detector exposed about 65 % of this region during the 100 s time intervals centered at -100 s and +300 s from the event time.