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17 August 2017 saw a major breakthrough in astronomy, when gravitational waves from a pair of colliding neutron stars were detected for the first time by the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Europe-based Virgo. This happens to be the strongest gravitational-wave signal detected so far, owing to the relatively close location of about 130 million light-years from earth. The detection was also confirmed by a large number of telescopes around the world that studied various forms of radiation from the merger. This is a new milestone in the success saga of advanced gravitational wave detectors, which have announced the discoveries of four black hole mergers to date. The first such detection in 2015 led to the awarding of the Nobel prize in physics this year.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne of the LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves”.

The LIGO observatories in the USA observed the gravitational-wave signals from yet another merging black hole pair. This time, LIGO was joined by the Virgo observatory from Europe, which significantly contributed to the improved localization of this astronomical source in the sky, and enabled new tests of Einstein's theory based on the polarization of gravitational waves.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has made another successful detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space and time, from the merger of two massive black holes that happened three billion light years away. This firmly reiterates the remarkable launch, announced last year, of a new window of astronomy.

While the celebrations for the first detection of gravitational waves are still ringing down, we are excited to announce the observation of yet another binary black hole merger by LIGO. On December 26, 2015 at 09:09AM IST the LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana detected a signal from the coalescence of two black holes, with masses 14 and 8 times the mass of the sun, merging into a more massive, rapidly rotating black hole that is 21 times the mass of the sun. The event happened 1.4 billion years ago, lasted in LIGO's frequency band for about a second and released about 1 solar mass worth of energy in that short period. For comparison, only a tiny fraction of the sun's mass gets converted to light in its entire lifetime, which is enough to keep the earth warm for billions of years.

The Advanced LIGO gravitational-wave observatories in the USA have been officially dedicated in a ceremony held on Tuesday, May 19, at the LIGO Hanford facility in Richland, Washington state. This marks a major step in the international effort for the first direct detection of gravitational waves.

The IndIGO consortium has been accepted as a member research group of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). LSC is an international collaboration of scientists working on gravitational-wave-observation program, and is responsible for analyzing the data collected by the LIGO observatories in the USA and the GEO 600 observatory in Germany.

The Indian Initiative in Gravitational-Wave Observations (IndIGO) has been accepted as the newest member of the Gravitational Wave International Committee (GWIC). This marks an important recognition to the consortium by the international gravitational-wave (GW) community. GWIC was formed in 1997 to facilitate international collaboration and cooperation in the construction, operation and use of the major GW detection facilities worldwide. GWIC is affiliated with the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation.

The Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) has funded an Indo-US Center for gravitational-wave physics and astronomy. The center will facilitate collaboration between Indian and US scientists working in the emerging field of gravitational-wave (GW) astronomy, with an eye to consolidating the Indo-US collaboration in GW-theory and data analysis, and extending it for setting up large-scale experimental facilities, and building related technological expertise in India.