Kilonova Seekers
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Find cosmic explosions in real-time with the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) - new data uploaded every 15 minutes!
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Message from the researcher
This is true real-time astrophysics: with every close of the shutter, new discoveries will stream in. You could discover the next kilonova, or perhaps more excitingly new transients we haven't seen before!
Tom KillesteinAbout Kilonova Seekers
Data last uploaded: 2025-04-28 05:45
GOTO is a purpose-built optical sky survey designed to rapidly follow up the afterglows of 'compact binary mergers', known as kilonovae - cosmic explosions triggered by neutron stars and black holes smashing together in distant galaxies. There are two GOTO sites, GOTO-North in the northern hemisphere on La Palma and GOTO-South in the southern hemisphere in Australia, each with 16 telescopes covering over 80 square degrees of the sky, providing all-sky coverage every 2 nights.
Citizen science is important for our work as GOTO generates significant volumes of data, taxing even machine-learning based methods. Humans are excellent at dealing with uncertainty (admitting when they don't know) and identifying 'anomalies' (novel examples that have never been seen) - often this is where the most exciting objects are hiding!
This unique citizen science project allows you to assist in the identification of transient events from GOTO in near real-time, updating with new data from the telescopes in an hourly stream.
Background image (c) Krzysztof Ulaczyk 2018.