juliensimon/gravitational-wave-events

Gravitational Wave Events (GWOSC)

Credit: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

Part of a dataset collection on Hugging Face.

Dataset description

All confirmed gravitational wave events from the Gravitational-Wave Open Science Center (GWOSC), covering LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA observing runs.

Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime generated by the acceleration of massive objects, predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1916 and first directly detected on September 14, 2015, by the LIGO detectors. That event, GW150914, was produced by the merger of two black holes and earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Each row represents one gravitational wave event (merger of compact objects such as black holes and/or neutron stars). Parameters include component masses, distance, spins, signal-to-noise ratio, and astrophysical probability. The catalog spans multiple observing runs of increasing sensitivity, from the initial O1/O2 runs through O3 and into O4.

The vast majority of events are binary black hole (BBH) mergers, but the catalog also includes binary neutron star (BNS) mergers -- most notably GW170817, the first event with an electromagnetic counterpart -- and neutron star-black hole (NSBH) systems. This dataset enables research into the mass distribution of stellar-mass black holes, the equation of state of neutron star matter, the expansion rate of the universe via standard siren cosmology, and the formation channels of compact binary systems.

This dataset is suitable for tabular classification tasks.

Schema

Column	Type	Description	Sample	Null %
name	str	Event identifier encoding the detection date; 'GW' prefix for confident detections (e.g. 'GW150914' = Sep 14 2015); some sub-threshold candidates use an 'S' prefix	GRB051103	0.0%
gps	float64	Detection time in GPS seconds (seconds since GPS epoch Jan 6 1980 00:00:00 UTC); GPS time does not include leap seconds; use astropy.time for accurate UTC conversion	815043278.0	0.0%
catalog	str	Source catalog identifier (e.g. 'GWTC-1', 'GWTC-2', 'GWTC-3'); later catalogs supersede earlier ones for the same event with improved parameter estimates	Initial_LIGO_Virgo	0.0%
run	str	LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA observing run derived from catalog (e.g. 'O1/O2', 'O3a', 'O3b', 'O4a'); later runs use more sensitive detectors	Initial	0.0%
mass_1	float64	Source-frame mass of the heavier compact object in solar masses; mass_1 >= mass_2 by convention; BBH typical range 5-100, BNS range 1.1-2.5	34.6	27.2%
mass_1_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on mass_1 (signed negative offset from median)	-2.6	27.2%
mass_1_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on mass_1 (signed positive offset from median)	4.4	27.2%
mass_2	float64	Source-frame mass of the lighter compact object in solar masses; always <= mass_1 by convention; distinguishes BBH, NSBH, and BNS merger types	30.0	27.2%
mass_2_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on mass_2 (signed negative offset from median)	-4.6	27.2%
mass_2_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on mass_2 (signed positive offset from median)	2.9	27.2%
chirp_mass	float64	Chirp mass in solar masses: M_c = (m1*m2)^(3/5) / (m1+m2)^(1/5); the best-constrained mass combination from gravitational wave phase evolution	27.9	27.2%
chirp_mass_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on chirp_mass (signed negative offset from median)	-1.5	27.2%
chirp_mass_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on chirp_mass (signed positive offset from median)	1.7	27.2%
luminosity_distance	float64	Luminosity distance to the source in Megaparsecs (1 Mpc = 3.26 Mly); inferred from signal amplitude; uncertain by ~50% due to sky-localization degeneracy	470.0	27.2%
luminosity_distance_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on luminosity_distance (signed negative offset from median)	-160.0	27.2%
luminosity_distance_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on luminosity_distance (signed positive offset from median)	140.0	27.2%
redshift	float64	Cosmological redshift z corresponding to the luminosity distance; null when distance is not well-constrained	0.1	27.9%
redshift_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on redshift (signed negative offset from median)	-0.03	27.9%
redshift_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on redshift (signed positive offset from median)	0.03	27.9%
chi_eff	float64	Effective inspiral spin parameter: mass-weighted projection of both component spins onto the orbital angular momentum axis; ranges from -1 (anti-aligned) to +1 (fully aligned)	-0.04	28.3%
chi_eff_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on chi_eff (signed negative offset from median)	-0.14	28.3%
chi_eff_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on chi_eff (signed positive offset from median)	0.12	28.3%
network_snr	float64	Coherent network matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio across all active detectors; confident detections typically have SNR > 8	26.0	1.9%
network_snr_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on network_snr (signed negative offset from median)	-0.2	76.6%
network_snr_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on network_snr (signed positive offset from median)	0.1	76.6%
p_astro	float64	Posterior probability that the trigger is of astrophysical origin rather than noise; catalog inclusion requires p_astro > 0.5; flagship events have p_astro > 0.99	1.0	14.3%
far	float64	False alarm rate in Hz (events per second of observation); quantifies how often random noise would produce a trigger of equal or greater significance	10.17	4.9%
final_mass	float64	Source-frame mass of the post-merger remnant in solar masses; less than mass_1 + mass_2 because ~5% of total mass is radiated as gravitational wave energy; null for events where remnant mass is not estimated	61.5	45.3%
final_mass_lower	float64	Lower 90% credible interval bound on final_mass (signed negative offset from median)	-2.9	45.7%
final_mass_upper	float64	Upper 90% credible interval bound on final_mass (signed positive offset from median)	3.4	45.7%

Quick stats

• 265 gravitational wave events
• 12 catalogs: GWTC-1-confident, GWTC-1-marginal, GWTC-2.1-auxiliary, GWTC-2.1-confident, GWTC-2.1-marginal, GWTC-3-confident, GWTC-3-marginal, GWTC-4.0, IAS-O3a, Initial_LIGO_Virgo, O3_IMBH_marginal, O4_Discovery_Papers
• Observing runs: Initial, O1/O2, O3, O3a, O3b, O4, O4a
• Median primary mass: 35.2 solar masses
• Median luminosity distance: 2090 Mpc

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/gravitational-wave-events", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/gravitational-wave-events", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()

# Binary black hole mergers (both masses > 3 solar masses)
bbh = df[(df["mass_1"] > 3) & (df["mass_2"] > 3)]
print(f"{len(bbh)} binary black hole events")

# Closest events
closest = df.nsmallest(5, "luminosity_distance")[["name", "luminosity_distance", "mass_1", "mass_2"]]

# Mass distribution
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
df["mass_1"].dropna().hist(bins=30, alpha=0.7, label="Primary mass")
df["mass_2"].dropna().hist(bins=30, alpha=0.7, label="Secondary mass")
plt.xlabel("Mass (solar masses)")
plt.ylabel("Count")
plt.legend()
plt.title("Gravitational Wave Event Mass Distribution")
plt.show()

Data source

https://gwosc.org/eventapi/

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a like on Hugging Face. It helps others discover it.

About the author

Created by Julien Simon — AI Operating Partner at Fortino Capital. Part of the Space Datasets collection.

Citation

@dataset{gravitational_wave_events,
  title = {Gravitational Wave Events (GWOSC)},
  author = {juliensimon},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/gravitational-wave-events},
  publisher = {Hugging Face}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0