Simulated time series of the gravitational wave amplitude generated by a core collapse supernova located at 30000 light-years from Earth
Simulated time series of the amplitude of a gravitational wave emitted by a rotating neutron star
The signal is continuous over years, only a small window of 30 s is shown here.
Credits: Virgo Collaboration
Album: Science – Astrophysical Sources
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Simulated time series of the amplitude of a gravitational wave generated by the coalescence of two neutron stars located 20 Mpc away from Earth
This gravitational wave would be seen during only 30 s in the Virgo data.
Credits: Virgo Collaboration
Album: Science – Astrophysical Sources
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Artist’s impression of a gravitational wave
In this example, spacetime is perturbed by the motion of two black holes rotating around each other. Gravitational waves appear when some event perturbs the curvature of spacetime. We can think of a drop falling in a pond. It perturbs the water surface, and this perturbation propagates outwards in the water as a mechanical wave. In a similar way, when spacetime is perturbed, gravitational waves are generated and they propagate outwards at the speed of light (~300000 km/s).
Credits: Swinburne Astronomy Productions
Album: Science – Gravitational Waves
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Deformation of the spacetime between a ring of test masses induced by the passage of a gravitational wave
Here the effect is widely magnified to show the phenomenon. However, this effect is very tiny. As an example, the gravitational wave generated by the merging of two neutron stars in a galaxy close to ours will stretch the distance Earth-Sun (150 million of km) by the size of an atom. Detecting such tiny distance variations is a big challenge and is the main goal of an instrument like Virgo
Album: Science – Gravitational Waves
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The volume of space accessible by the initial Virgo (green) and Advanced Virgo (purple)
Credits: Virgo Collaboration ; Background image: Andrew Z. Colvin
Album: Science – Astrophysical Sources
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