The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
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Artist’s impression of two neutron stars – the compact remnants of what were once massive stars – spiralling towards each other and eventually 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.
About half a day after the detections, scientists at various optical observatories, including the European Southern Observatory's telescopes in Chile, spotted something new near the core of galaxy NGC 4993. It was a kilonova, the aftermath of the neutron star collision.
This is the first discovery of gravitational waves and light coming from the same source.
Full story: Integral sees blast travelling with gravitational waves