GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses

Understand

We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run.

• The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05:30:44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19.
• The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: a ~30 solar mass black hole merged with a ~8 solar mass black hole companion.
• The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.22 and 0.60 (90% probability).