GW190521
Sign in to saveAlso known as S190521g, GW190521g
GW190521 (initially S190521g) was a gravitational wave signal resulting from the merger of two black holes. It was possibly associated with a coincident flash of light; if this association is correct, the merger would have occurred near a third supermassive black hole. The event was observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors on 21 May 2019 at 03:02:29 UTC, and published on 2 September 2020. The event had a Luminosity distance of 17 billion light years away from Earth, within a 765 deg2 area towards one of two roughly antipodal areas of the sky, one centered around Coma Berenices and the oth
Key facts
- Astronomical event.image_size
- 280px
- Astronomical event.caption
- The GW event GW190521 observed by the LIGO Hanford (left), LIGO Livingston (middle), and Virgo (right) detectors
- Astronomical event.constellation
- Centaurus
- Astronomical event.epoch
- J2000.0
- Astronomical event.detected_by
- LIGO, Virgo
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- transient astronomical event
- Constellation
- Phoenix
- Distance from Earth
- 5.300
- Image
- PhysRevLett.125.101102 Fig1.png
Show 4 more facts
- redshift
- 0.82
- site of astronomical discovery
- Virgo
- time of discovery or invention
- 2019-05-21
- Commons category
- GW190521
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~5 min read
Encyclopedic overview
7 sectionsContents
- Physical significance
- Possible electromagnetic counterpart
- Possible eccentricity
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
GW190521 (initially S190521g) was a gravitational wave signal resulting from the merger of two black holes. It was possibly associated with a coincident flash of light; if this association is correct, the merger would have occurred near a third supermassive black hole. The event was observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors on 21 May 2019 at 03:02:29 UTC, and published on 2 September 2020. The event had a Luminosity distance of 17 billion light years away from Earth, within a 765 deg2 area towards one of two roughly antipodal areas of the sky, one centered around Coma Berenices and the other in Tucana.
At 85 and 66 solar masses (M☉) respectively, the two black holes comprising this merger are the largest progenitor masses observed to date. The resulting black hole had a mass equivalent to 142 times that of the Sun, making this the first clear detection of an intermediate-mass black hole. The remaining 8 solar masses were radiated away as energy in the form of gravitational waves.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “GW190521” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.