I believe most of the time they run models with the known parameters and use that to decide what the objects were. It also seems that we appear to understand what different wave patterns look like and know what the source objects tend to be. Other times I believe they can figure out what one object was but not the other and just kinda have to guess at it. I would also suspect that once they determine the location in the sky where the event happened they can check and see if there are any past observations of that area of the sky by other telescopes and just look and see what was there previously.
I’m sure I’m greatly simplifying this, but that’s what I turned up with a bit of reading on the LIGO website for Gravitational Wave Sources and Types.
With the interferometers they can estimate the mass of the 2 objects entering in collision and the resulting one.
Since there are multiple interferometers, they can also point to the region of the sky it happens. The “alert” can be picked up by other observatories which can look there on all frequencies.
Depending on if there is an explosion or not they can confirm if the objects were neutron stars or black hole (the details are a bit fuzzy on my head for the black hole / neutron star merger).
I believe most of the time they run models with the known parameters and use that to decide what the objects were. It also seems that we appear to understand what different wave patterns look like and know what the source objects tend to be. Other times I believe they can figure out what one object was but not the other and just kinda have to guess at it. I would also suspect that once they determine the location in the sky where the event happened they can check and see if there are any past observations of that area of the sky by other telescopes and just look and see what was there previously.
I’m sure I’m greatly simplifying this, but that’s what I turned up with a bit of reading on the LIGO website for Gravitational Wave Sources and Types.
Edit: typos
With the interferometers they can estimate the mass of the 2 objects entering in collision and the resulting one.
Since there are multiple interferometers, they can also point to the region of the sky it happens. The “alert” can be picked up by other observatories which can look there on all frequencies.
Depending on if there is an explosion or not they can confirm if the objects were neutron stars or black hole (the details are a bit fuzzy on my head for the black hole / neutron star merger).