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Data

Cumulative number of gravitational wave observations

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Space Exploration & Satellites

About this data

Cumulative number of gravitational wave observations
Cumulative number of observations confidently detected by the world's largest gravitational wave interferometers: LIGO (United States), Virgo (Italy), and KAGRA (Japan).
Source
Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 8, 2026
Next expected update
January 2027
Date range
2015–2024
Unit
events

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Gravitational Wave Open Science Center – Gravitational wave events

Gravitational wave event list, accessed via the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (GWOSC).

Retrieved on
January 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://gwosc.org/eventapi/html/allevents/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Gravitational Wave Open Science Center - Event List (2025).

    

  • The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration, "Open Data from LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA through the First Part of the Fourth Observing Run", arXiv:2508.18079 -- INSPIRE
    • 

  • R. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration and KAGRA Collaboration), "Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO", ApJS 267 29 (2023) -- INSPIRE
    • 

  • R. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration), "Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo", SoftwareX 13 (2021) 100658 -- INSPIRE
    • 


This research has made use of data or software obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (gwosc.org), a service of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and KAGRA. This material is based upon work supported by NSF's LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation, as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. Virgo is funded, through the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and the Dutch Nikhef, with contributions by institutions from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Monaco, Poland, Portugal, Spain. KAGRA is supported by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in Japan; National Research Foundation (NRF) and Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) in Korea; Academia Sinica (AS) and National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan.

Gravitational wave event list, accessed via the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (GWOSC).

Retrieved on
January 8, 2026
Retrieved from
https://gwosc.org/eventapi/html/allevents/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Gravitational Wave Open Science Center - Event List (2025).

    

  • The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, the KAGRA Collaboration, "Open Data from LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA through the First Part of the Fourth Observing Run", arXiv:2508.18079 -- INSPIRE
    • 

  • R. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration, Virgo Collaboration and KAGRA Collaboration), "Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and GEO", ApJS 267 29 (2023) -- INSPIRE
    • 

  • R. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration), "Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo", SoftwareX 13 (2021) 100658 -- INSPIRE
    • 


This research has made use of data or software obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (gwosc.org), a service of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and KAGRA. This material is based upon work supported by NSF's LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation, as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. Virgo is funded, through the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and the Dutch Nikhef, with contributions by institutions from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Monaco, Poland, Portugal, Spain. KAGRA is supported by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in Japan; National Research Foundation (NRF) and Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) in Korea; Academia Sinica (AS) and National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Cumulative number of gravitational wave observations”, part of the following publication: Edouard Mathieu, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2022) - “Space Exploration and Satellites”. Data adapted from Gravitational Wave Open Science Center. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Cumulative number of gravitational wave observations” [dataset]. Gravitational Wave Open Science Center, “Gravitational wave events” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-gravitational-wave-observations.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear