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Colliding neutron stars

Colliding neutron stars


Date: 16 October 2017
Satellite: INTEGRAL
Copyright: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Artist's impression of two neutron stars – the compact remnants of what were once massive stars – spiralling towards each other just before merging.

The collision of these dense, compact objects produced gravitational waves – fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime – that were detected by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration on 17 August 2017. A couple of seconds after that, ESA's INTEGRAL and NASA's Fermi satellites detected a burst of gamma rays, the luminous counterpart to the gravitational waves emitted by the cosmic clash.

This is the first discovery of gravitational waves and light coming from the same source.

Full story: INTEGRAL sees blast travelling with gravitational waves

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO License. Creative Commons License

Last Update: 1 September 2019
28-Mar-2024 11:37 UT

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