LIGO and Virgo detectors restart gravitational wave observation
Next week, the LIGO and Virgo detectors will resume their observing campaigns, which promise to collect more than 200 gravitational-wave events by the end of this current observing run (O4). Astronomers also hope that new multi-messenger events will be detected. Multi-messenger events are those observed both in gravitational and electromagnetic waves, and can be further followed up by other telescopes.
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration will begin the second part of its fourth observing run (O4b) on April 10th. The European detector Virgo in Italy, near Pisa, will also join the run, observing alongside two LIGO interferometers in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana in the US, which conducted the first part of the run (O4a) from May 2023 to January 2024. O4b is planned to run until early 2025.