Astrophysicists honoured for gravitational wave astronomy work

Posted on: 13 January 2025

Trinity astrophysicist, Evan Keane, Associate Professor and Director of Trinity’s Rosse Observatory, has been honoured with the Royal Astronomical Society’s Group Achievement Award for his work in gravitational wave astronomy as part of the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) collaboration.

The EPTA brings together astronomers and experts in gravitational waves from more than ten institutions across Europe, including Trinity and the University of Galway, and collects and analyses pulsar timing data from six of the most sensitive radio telescopes in the world.

Together with its Indian counterpart InPTA, the EPTA forms one of several pulsar timing arrays currently in operation and aims to observe very low frequency gravitational waves in the 1-100 nHz range through precision timing of very stable millisecond pulsars over extremely long periods of time (more than 10 years).

Precision timing of signals from pulsars in different parts of the Milky Way effectively forms a gravitational wave detector with a baseline the size of the Galaxy.

Among other things, this research has presented some of the first evidence for the detection of gravitational waves from in-spiralling supermassive black holes. 

Prof. Keane, from Trinity’s School of Physics said: “It is exciting to be part of the European Pulsar Timing Array project, especially as the era of gravitational wave astronomy using this technique has just kicked off.

“Gravitational wave astronomy is not easy and so it takes a large collaborative effort to make progress. Fortunately, in Europe we have a long history of trans-national collaboration in research and the EPTA is a great example of this. At such an exciting time students and researchers are keen to join in the work. Hopefully the EPTA team will expand further with more members here in Trinity in the coming years.

“At Trinity's Rosse Observatory, in Birr, we are also contributing to the International PTA effort to combine data worldwide to get the clearest possible picture of the low-frequency gravitational wave sky.”

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