Skynet Astromancer Suite: Gravitymancer

Abstract

The Gravitymancer processing tool within Skynet’s Astromancer suite opens a unique window for students of introductory astronomy courses to explore the most powerful events observed in our Universe – the merger of binary neutron-star systems and black-hole systems.  These merger events produce short-lived bursts of gravitational radiation, as observed by one or more of the following gravitational-wave observatories:  LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA.  Students can use Gravitymancer to load and interpret the archival event data, finding useful properties like the total mass and mass ratio of the binary system, distance, and inclination angle. While on the surface, students can interpret gravitational-wave events with an easy-to-use GUI, we present here the complex processing utilized to make this tool work.