Abstract Details

Name: Harsh Kumar
Affiliation: Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Conference ID: ASI2021_239
Title : Small Telescope Big Dreams: An effort to find kilonova with GROWTH-India Telescope.
Authors and Co-Authors : Author: - Harsh Kumar - IIT Bombay Co-authors:- Varun Bhalerao - IIT Bombay G.C. Anupama - IIA Bangalore Sudhanshu Barway - IIA Bangalore Vedant Shenoy - IIT Bombay Anirban Dutta - IIA Bangalore
Abstract Type : Oral
Abstract Category : Extragalactic Astronomy
Abstract : The mergers of compact objects like binary neutron stars(BNS) & black hole - neutron star (BH-NS) are among the most energetic events in the universe. These events provide us a glimpse into some of the most extreme physical processes. Merger events of BNS and BH-NS are believed to be the key to solving several open questions in astrophysics - including the sites of formation of r-process elements, progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the equation of state of ultra-dense matter, and can even provide an independent estimate of the Hubble constant. During its first-half run of O3, LIGO has detected ten events with at-least one neutron star as a merger object. We followed Six events out of these ten with GROWTH-India Telescope(GIT) in either "Tiled" / "Targeted" mode. The localisation regions put up by LIGO-Virgo were huge for most of the events. One of these events, named "S190426c," was well suited for tiled follow-up. We collaborated with GROWTH collaboration and covered 22 sq. degrees area of localisation consisting of 17.51 % of total probability. I present the detailed follow-up of GW events with India's first robotic telescope, "GIT," primarily the "S190426c," along with the pipeline development during the analysis of this event.