The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has announced the online release of an updated catalog of gravitational wave events observed to date. The catalog, named GWTC-4, includes data from the first part of the fourth observing run (O4a), which concluded in January 2025.
According to the LVK Collaboration, the new catalog contains 363 confirmed gravitational wave events, including 35 new detections from O4a. These events primarily involve mergers of binary black holes and binary neutron stars, with one candidate neutron star-black hole merger.
The catalog provides detailed information on the properties of each event, such as the masses and spins of the merging objects, and the distance to the source. This data is crucial for studying the population of compact objects and testing general relativity.
The LVK Collaboration continues to analyze data from the ongoing O4b observing run, which began in April 2025 and is expected to continue until early 2027. The collaboration aims to further increase the number of detected events and improve the precision of astrophysical measurements.
