LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250629bs
GCN Circular 40869
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250629bs: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate
Date
2025-06-29T13:05:07Z (17 days ago)
From
rodrigo.cuzinatto@unifal-mg.edu.br
Via
Web form
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We identified the compact binary merger candidate S250629bs during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1) and LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1) at 2025-06-29 12:13:04.377 UTC (GPS time: 1435234402.377). The candidate was found by the cWB [1], cWB BBH [2], GstLAL [3], and MBTA [4] analysis pipelines.
S250629bs is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 4.3e-08 Hz, or about one in 8 months. The event's properties can be found at this URL:
https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S250629bs
The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (94%), Terrestrial (6%), BNS (<1%), or NSBH (<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%. [5] Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. [5] 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 [6], distributed via GCN and SCiMMA notices about 23 seconds after the candidate event time.
* bayestar.multiorder.fits,2, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [6], distributed via GCN and SCiMMA notices about 4 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 3008 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 1811 +/- 561 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] Chatterjee et al. ApJ 896, 54 (2020) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab8dbe
[6] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016) doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.93.024013
GCN Circular 40873
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250629bs: Updated Sky localization
Date
2025-06-29T16:37:41Z (17 days ago)
From
John Veitch at U of Glasgow <john.veitch@ligo.org>
Via
Web form
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and the KAGRA Collaboration report:
We have conducted further analysis of the LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1) and LIGO Livingston Observatory (L1) data around the time of the compact binary merger (CBC) candidate S250629bs (GCN Circular 40869). 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/S250629bs
For the Bilby.multiorder.fits,0 sky map, the 90% credible region is 2998 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 4847 +/- 1746 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 41058
Subject
LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA S250629bs: Upper limits from Swift/BAT-GUANO
Date
2025-07-10T14:47:59Z (6 days ago)
From
Maia Williams at PSU <mjw6837@psu.edu>
Via
Web form
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 86.28% of the GW localization probability ([Bilby.multiorder.fits](https://gracedb.ligo.org/api/superevents/S250629bs/files/Bilby.multiorder.fits)) at merger time. A fraction 64.89% 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](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aba94f)).
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](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac9d38)), 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 |3.65 |3.14 |2.87 |3.39
|1.024 |1.87 |1.61 |1.47 |1.74
|4.096 |1.02 |0.88 |0.80 |0.95
|16.384 |0.65 |0.56 |0.51 |0.60
The upper limits as function of sky position are plotted here, alongside the GW localization:
https://zenodo.org/records/15843754
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/