Last December Danny Steeghs, Tom Marsh & I were awarded some funding to support a program of optical observations to measure (or improve) system parameters for bright X-ray binaries. These systems may produce detectable gravitational radiation, and optimal searches for these gravitational waves (e.g. with LIGO) depend on precise knowledge of the systems, including the orbital period and neutron star spin frequency. However, many of the best candidates are rather poorly known, so we hope to improve this situation. We hope to make our first observations this year, likely at La Palma, Canary Islands.

Labels: 2010, gravitational waves