GROWTH on S190510g: DECam Observation Planning and Follow-Up of a Distant Binary Neutron Star Merger Candidate

Understand

The first two months of the third Advanced LIGO and Virgo observing run (2019 April-May) showed that distant gravitational wave (GW) events can now be readily detected.

• Three candidate mergers containing neutron stars (NS) were reported in a span of 15 days, all likely located more than 100 Mpc away.
• However, distant events such as the three new NS mergers are likely to be coarsely localized, which highlights the importance of facilities and scheduling systems that enable deep observations over hundreds to thousands of square degrees to detect the electromagnetic counterparts.
• On 2019-05-10 02:59:39.292 UT the GW candidate S190510g was discovered and initially classified as a BNS merger with 98% probability.