GW170817 is catalogued in this registry as a gw-event, held in the frame of Milky Way, from Gravitational-wave events (LIGO/Virgo, curated).
Registry id GW170817 ·
source layer gwtc ·
provenance PROCESSED — derived deterministically from source catalogues (unit, frame and epoch conversions, cross-source reconciliation) — no value invented
Exists from JD -4.701484939062163×10^10 (outside the calendar range this page can render) — no end date is recorded.
Open GW170817 in the live scene → The scene composes a position for any date and is where a figure becomes a picture. It downloads the whole catalogue first: measured against the built product, an object outside the core resolves after about 16 s over a local network and about 147 s over a 4 Mbit link, having transferred roughly 70 MB. If you cannot wait that long, this page is the answer.
| Kind | gw-event |
|---|---|
| Origin | natural |
Gravitational-wave event (bns). ~1.46+1.27 M☉ merger. Luminosity distance ~40 Mpc; the node sits at that value as a plain radius — at these distances a luminosity distance exceeds the comoving distance, so it is neither the source's present distance nor a light-travel distance. Placed at the epoch the event HAPPENED, 129 million years before its signal reached Earth (2017), by removing its MODELLED lookback time (redshift from the published luminosity distance, flat ΛCDM — NOT distance/c, which would overstate it). The registry's default view is the absolute one, where every object sits where and when it really is; put an observer on Earth and the signal arrives on the catalogued date again. ARRIVAL DATE: the catalogued detection date is when the SIGNAL REACHED EARTH's detectors, not when the merger happened. that was earlier by AT MOST about 130 million years, the bound its luminosity distance divided by c gives: that distance always exceeds how far the wave actually travelled, so the figure is a ceiling and never the travel time itself. The node itself is placed at the merger (the modelled lookback time removed), so the detection date falls out of the geometry. First binary neutron-star merger detected in gravitational waves, with a coincident electromagnetic counterpart (GRB 170817A + kilonova AT 2017gfo in NGC 4993). Multi-messenger astronomy. [Abbott et al. 2017]
Reproduced as the source wrote it. Author-year citations link to their DOI where one is registered.
These are absences in the catalogues aggregated here, not measurements of zero, and not statements that the quantity is unknown to science:
| Database | Gravitational-wave events (LIGO/Virgo, curated) |
|---|---|
| Authority | LVK GWTC; Abbott et al. 2016 (GW150914), 2017 (GW170817) |
| Licence | Public record |
| How it entered | Curated data-as-code (src/ingest/catalogs/gwtc.ts) |
| Coverage | GW150914 + GW170817 (cited); expanding shells at c from the detection epoch |
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