News Archive

Unexpected Passing of Alexander Kann 13 March 2023

We are very shocked to hear the news of the unexpected passing of ENGRAVE member David Alexander Kann (Alex). Read More ›

Chryssa Kouveliotou awarded the Shaw prize 01 June 2021

We congratulate ENGRAVE member, professor Chryssa Kouveliotou, who was awarded the 2021 Shaw prize in astronomy, jointly with professor Victoria Kaspi, for “their contributions to our understanding of magnetars”. Read More ›

ENGRAVE scientists awarded JWST time 31 March 2021

In the life of professional astronomers, it is a nail-biting moment when the results from a call for proposals are announced. But March 30, 2021, was a very special day, as the Space Telescope Space Institute announced the allocation for the first year (Cycle 1) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This is the forthcoming next-generation space telescope, due to be launched later this year, on October 31st (update: JWST was finally launched on December 25th, 2021), and a cornerstone mission in the history of astronomy. Read More ›

The needle and the haystack 07 February 2020

No firm electromagnetic counterpart of the first black hole / neutron star merger has been found by ENGRAVE. But the hunt continues! Read More ›

2nd ENGRAVE collaboration meeting 15 November 2019

The second ENGRAVE all-hands meeting was held on November 12-14th, 2019, at the INAF Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory, Naples, under beautiful blue skies and the shadow of Vesuvius. We thank the local organisers led by Maria Teresa Boticella, Aniello Grado and their team of Fabio Ragosta, Pietro Schipani, Andrea Di Dato, Maria Teresa Fulco, A. Maiorica and R. Aiello. ENGRAVE thanks GRAWITA and the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) for their generous support of the meeting, and the Director of the Capodimonte Observatory, Marcella Marconi, for hosting us. Read More ›

The mystery of AT 2019osy 24 September 2019

While searching for a counterpart to the gravitational wave event from August 14 (S190814bv), astronomers using the ASKAP telescope discovered an unusual transient in the radio band: AT 2019osy. Its nature is unclear, but its location within a galaxy and a rising radio flux made it worth searching for a kilonova event. Read More ›

First light of ENGRAVE and a potential NS-BH merger 20 August 2019

A few months ago, the hunt for gravitational waves as part of the third observing run (O3) was initiated by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors on April 1, 2019. Both detectors have been upgraded since they were last in operation and have already reported more than 20 gravitational-wave candidate events of either merging binary black holes or merging binary neutron stars. Read More ›

AT2017gfo Data Release 25 February 2019

ESO’s VLT + X-Shooter observed AT2017gfo nightly for 10 consecutive nights after discovery providing complete spectral coverage from 3300 Angstroms to 2.5 microns. The data were published in the papers Pian et al. 2017, Nature, 551, 67 and Smartt et al. 2017, Nature, 551, 75. The ENGRAVE collaboration have fully reduced all the data in a uniform manner (data reduced by J. Selsing) and spectrophotometrically calibrated to published photometry of AT2017gfo (by J. Gillanders). Read More ›

ENGRAVEr's mind under pressure - Dry run before Christmas 05 December 2018

The ENGRAVE collaboration finished their first dry run in preparation for the LIGO/VIRGO engineering run ER13 starting on 14 December. With new gravitational wave detections on the horizon four ENGRAVE operations teams tested for the first time telescope triggers, data reduction step-by-step procedure and their observation strategies and capabilities. We would like to thank all participants for their efforts! Read More ›

ENGRAVE collaboration meeting 28 August 2018

The first ENGRAVE all-hands meeting was held on 31st October 2018 at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching. Thanks to our hosts Ting-Wan Chen, Tassilo Schweyer, Jan Bolmer for organising and Prof Kirpal Nandra for his generous support of the meeting. More details for participants are on our wiki Read More ›

ENGRAVE awarded VLT Large Programme 02 August 2018

ENGRAVE saw a successful start to its planned use of ESO’s Very Large Telescope with a substantial allocation of time in Period 102. ESO’s OPC awarded us time on UT1 to use NAC0 and FORS2, UT2 to employ X-SHOOTER and UT4 using HAWK-I and MUSE. Read More ›

ENGRAVE is formed 28 February 2018

The ENGRAVE (Electro-magnetic counterparts of gravitational waves at the Very Large Telescope) project was founded on 28th February 2018, with the establishment of the Governing Council and a set of founding principles. Read More ›