GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral

Understand

On August 17, 2017 at 12:41:04 UTC the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors made their first observation of a binary neutron star inspiral.

• The signal, GW170817, was detected with a combined signal-to-noise ratio of 32.4 and a false-alarm-rate estimate of less than one per $8.0\times10^4$ years.
• We infer the component masses of the binary to be between 0.86 and 2.26 $M_\odot$, in agreement with masses of known neutron stars.
• Restricting the component spins to the range inferred in binary neutron stars, we find the component masses to be in the range 1.17 to 1.60 $M_\odot$, with the total mass of the system $2.74^{+0.04}_{-0.01}\,M_\odot$.