Catching a gravitational wave
Gravitational waves are incredibly feeble, and it doesn't help when the
source of the waves is also moving about in the sky, for example in a binary
orbit around a companion. That's the case for Scorpius X-1, thought to be the
best candidate for persistent gravitational waves among the class of accreting
neutron stars. Measurements to improve the precision of the orbital parameters
can help in turn to improve the sensitivity of future gravitational wave
searches. A
Monash media story
accompanying our
recent paper reporting such measurements for Sco X-1 was also reported in
ifl science
and
phys.org