LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250629ae
GCN Circular 41057
Maia Williams (PSU), Samuele Ronchini (PSU), Gayathri Raman (PSU), James DeLaunay (PSU), Tyler Parsotan (NASA GSFC), Jamie A. Kennea (PSU), Aaron Tohuvavohu (Caltech) report:
Swift/BAT was observing 50.9% of the GW localization probability (Bilby.multiorder.fits) at merger time. A fraction 42.48% of the GW localization posterior is contained inside the BAT coded FoV.
The LVK notice, distributed in near real-time, triggered the Swift Mission Operations Center operated Gamma-ray Urgent Archiver for Novel Opportunities (GUANO; Tohuvavohu et al. 2020, ApJ, 900, 1).
Upon trigger by this notice, GUANO sent a command to the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) to save 200 seconds of BAT event-mode data from [-50,+150] seconds around the time of the burst. All the requested event mode data was delivered to the ground.
Using the NITRATES analysis (DeLaunay + Tohuvavohu 2022, ApJ, 941, 169), we searched for emission on 8 timescales from 0.128s to 16.384s in the interval [-20,+20] seconds around the merger time. We find no evidence for a signal, and derive the following upper limits.
We quote the 5-sigma flux upper limits in the 15-350 keV band, weighted over the GW localization, for four spectral templates (soft, normal, and hard GRB-like templates described in [arXiv:1612.02395], and spectral shape from GRB170817A [arXiv:1710.05446]) and for four time bins. In units of 10^-7 erg/s/cm^2:
| time_bin (s) | soft | normal | hard | GRB170817 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.256 | 2.96 | 2.54 | 2.33 | 2.73 |
| 1.024 | 1.51 | 1.29 | 1.19 | 1.39 |
| 4.096 | 0.81 | 0.69 | 0.63 | 0.74 |
| 16.384 | 0.49 | 0.42 | 0.39 | 0.45 |
The upper limits as function of sky position are plotted here, alongside the GW localization: https://zenodo.org/records/15843728
The solid and dashed lines indicate the 90% and 50% GW contour levels, respectively. The corresponding fits file is also included.
GUANO is a fully autonomous, extremely low latency, spacecraft commanding pipeline designed for targeted recovery of BAT event mode data around the times of compelling astrophysical events to enable more sensitive GRB searches.
A live reporting of Swift/BAT event data recovered by GUANO can be found at: https://www.swift.psu.edu/guano/
GCN Circular 40870
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We have conducted further analysis of the LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1), LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1), and Virgo Observatory (V1) data around the time of the compact binary merger (CBC) candidate S250629ae (GCN Circular 40867). Parameter estimation has been performed using Bilby [1] and a new sky map, Bilby.multiorder.fits,0, distributed via GCN and SCiMMA notices, is available for retrieval from the GraceDB event page:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S250629ae
For the Bilby.multiorder.fits,0 sky map, the 90% credible region is 2834 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 7075 +/- 2116 Mpc (a posteriori mean +/- standard deviation).
For further information about analysis methodology and the contents of this alert, refer to the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Public Alerts User Guide https://emfollow.docs.ligo.org/.
[1] Ashton et al. ApJS 241, 27 (2019) doi:10.3847/1538-4365/ab06fc and Morisaki et al. PRD 108, 123040 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.123040
GCN Circular 40867
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We identified the compact binary merger candidate S250629ae during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1), LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1), and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2025-06-29 05:50:36.925 UTC (GPS time: 1435211454.925). The candidate was found by the cWB [1], cWB BBH [2], GstLAL [3], MBTA [4], and PyCBC Live [5] analysis pipelines.
S250629ae is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 3.2e-08 Hz, or about one in 11 months. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S250629ae
The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (98%), Terrestrial (2%), NSBH (<1%), or BNS (<1%).
Assuming the candidate is astrophysical in origin, the probability that at least one of the compact objects is consistent with a neutron star mass (HasNS) is <1%. [6] Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. [6] Both HasNS and HasRemnant consider the support of several neutron star equations of state for maximum neutron star mass. The probability that either of the binary components lies between 3 and 5 solar masses (HasMassGap) is <1%.
The source chirp mass falls with highest probability in the bin (22.0, 44.0) solar masses, assuming the candidate is astrophysical in origin.
Two sky maps are available at this time and can be retrieved from the GraceDB event page:
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,1, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [7], distributed via GCN and SCiMMA notices about 40 seconds after the candidate event time.
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,2, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [7], distributed via GCN and SCiMMA notices about 5 minutes after the candidate event time.
The preferred sky map at this time is bayestar.multiorder.fits,2. For the bayestar.multiorder.fits,2 sky map, the 90% credible region is 3184 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 4550 +/- 1295 Mpc (a posteriori mean +/- standard deviation).
For further information about analysis methodology and the contents of this alert, refer to the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA Public Alerts User Guide https://emfollow.docs.ligo.org/.
[1] Klimenko et al. PRD 93, 042004 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.042004
[2] T. Mishra et al. PRD 105, 083018 (2022) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.105.083018
[3] Tsukada et al. PRD 108, 043004 (2023) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.108.043004 and Ewing et al. PRD 109, 042008 (2024) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.109.042008
[4] Alléné et al. CQG 42, 105009 (2025) doi:10.1088/1361-6382/add234
[5] Dal Canton et al. ApJ 923, 254 (2021) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac2f9a
[6] Chatterjee et al. ApJ 896, 54 (2020) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8dbe
[7] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.024013