Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO)

News & Articles

NASA Collaborating on European-led Gravitational Wave Observatory in Space

4 min read

The first space-based observatory designed to detect gravitational waves has passed a major review and will proceed to the construction…

Article10 months ago

How NASA Chases and Investigates Bright Cosmic Blips

9 min read

Stephen Lesage’s phone started vibrating just after halftime on Oct. 9, 2022, while he was watching a soccer game in…

Article10 months ago
This image depicts a gamma-ray burst caused by the merger of two neutron stars. The merger creates gravitational waves (shown as pale arcs rippling outward) being created following the merger of two neutron stars, a near-light-speed jet that produced gamma rays (shown as brown cones and a rapidly traveling magenta glow erupting from the center of the collision), and a donut-shaped ring of expanding blue debris around the center of the explosion. A variety of colors represent the wavelengths of light produced by the kilonova, creating violet to blue-white to red bursts above and below the collision.

Gamma-Ray Bursts: Black Hole Birth Announcements

4 min read

Gamma-ray bursts are the brightest, most violent explosions in the universe, but they can be surprisingly tricky to detect. Our…

Article1 year ago
At the beginning of this animated GIF, we see the glowing gas surrounding two black holes. The gas is shaded orange and purple, and it is tightly wound around each individual black hole. They each have a tail of gas, looking like a comma. As the animation proceeds, the camera moves to see the two black holes nearly in line with each other and then back to see the bottom of the system. As the view tilts, the gravitational effects of the black holes at the center cause the light to bend like a funhouse mirror.

A Mesmerizing Model of Monster Black Holes

2 min read

Just about every galaxy the size of our Milky Way (or bigger) has a supermassive black hole at its center.…

Article2 years ago
This animated gif of supercomputer data takes you to the inner zone of the accretion disk of a stellar-mass black hole. Purple and blue-colored swirls spin in toward a central black circle.

Black Holes: Seeing the Invisible!

4 min read

Black holes are some of the most bizarre and fascinating objects in the cosmos. Astronomers want to study lots of…

Article4 years ago
Small specs of white and tan drift by, and a large, irregular shape floats into the image from the left, traveling to the right and down until it disappears off the bottom of the frame.

Be Glad You Don’t Have to Dust in Space!

4 min read

Come springtime you might be ready to throw open the windows and break out the feather duster, because that’s a…

Article6 years ago
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What Is the Solar Wind?

An animation shows the Sun in the bottom left corner. Cascading off the Sun are lines in every direction, representing solar wind streams. As they move away, kinks form in the lines, and grow wider as they move outward.