Gravitational Wave Event Analyzer

Fetch real LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA gravitational wave events from the GWOSC (Gravitational Wave Open Science Center) catalog, download detector strain data, run signal processing (whitening, Q-transform, matched filter), classify merger types (BBH/BNS/NSBH), and produce publication-quality plots. Use when asked to: analyze gravitational waves, fetch LIGO data, detect black hole mergers, explore GW events, run strain analysis on GW231123 or GW150914 or any GWTC event, visualize gravitational wave signals.

A skill for fetching and analyzing real gravitational wave events from LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA using public GWOSC data.

What This Skill Does

1. Catalog Query — Fetch events from GWTC (Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog) via GWOSC API
2. Strain Download — Pull real detector strain timeseries data for any event
3. Signal Processing — Whiten, bandpass filter, and Q-transform the strain
4. Merger Classification — Classify event type: BBH (binary black hole), BNS (binary neutron star), or NSBH
5. Visualization — Generate spectrograms, waveform plots, and summary figures

Usage

Analyze a specific event

python

from gw_analyzer import GWEventAnalyzer

analyzer = GWEventAnalyzer()
result = analyzer.analyze_event("GW150914")
result.plot()
result.summary()

List recent events

python

events = analyzer.list_events(catalog="GWTC-3", min_far=1e-3)

Full pipeline

python

python gw_analyzer.py --event GW150914 --detector H1 --output ./output/
python gw_analyzer.py --event GW231123_135430 --detector L1 --output ./output/
python gw_analyzer.py --list-events --catalog GWTC-3 --top 10

Key Events to Try

Event	Type	Description
GW150914	BBH	First detection ever (2015)
GW170817	BNS	First neutron star merger (multi-messenger)
GW200105	NSBH	First neutron star–black hole merger
GW231123_135430	BBH	Most massive merger ever detected

Output

• {event}_waveform.png — Raw + whitened + filtered strain timeseries
• {event}_qtransform.png — Time-frequency Q-transform (chirp signature)
• {event}_summary.json — Event parameters, classification, SNR estimate
• {event}_report.txt — Human-readable analysis report

Data Source

All data fetched from GWOSC — publicly released under CC BY 4.0. Catalog: GWTC (Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog), updated through O4a run.

Dependencies

text

gwpy>=3.0.0
gwosc>=0.7.0
numpy>=1.24.0
scipy>=1.10.0
matplotlib>=3.7.0
astropy>=5.3.0