TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR NUMBER: 27278 SUBJECT: LIGO/Virgo S200302c: Identification of a GW compact binary merger candidate DATE: 20/03/02 02:20:13 GMT FROM: Peter Shawhan at U of Maryland/LSC The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration report: We identified the compact binary merger candidate S200302c during real-time processing of data from LIGO Hanford Observatory (H1) and Virgo Observatory (V1) at 2020-03-02 01:58:11.519 UTC (GPS time: 1267149509.519). The candidate was found by the GstLAL [1] analysis pipeline. S200302c is an event of interest because its false alarm rate, as estimated by the online analysis, is 9.3e-09 Hz, or about one in 3 years. The event's properties can be found at this URL: https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S200302c The classification of the GW signal, in order of descending probability, is BBH (89%), Terrestrial (11%), BNS (<1%), MassGap (<1%), or NSBH (<1%). Assuming the candidate is astrophysical in origin, the probability that the lighter compact object has a mass < 3 solar masses (HasNS) is <1%. Using the masses and spins inferred from the signal, the probability of matter outside the final compact object (HasRemnant) is <1%. Two sky maps are available at this time and can be retrieved from the GraceDB event page: * bayestar.fits.gz,0, an initial localization generated by BAYESTAR [2], distributed via GCN notice about a minute after the candidate event time. * bayestar.fits.gz,1, distributed via GCN notice about 7 minutes after the candidate event time. (This is identical to bayestar.fits.gz,0 ) The preferred sky map at this time is bayestar.fits.gz,1. For the bayestar.fits.gz,1 sky map, the 90% credible region is 6704 deg2. Marginalized over the whole sky, the a posteriori luminosity distance estimate is 1737 +/- 500 Mpc (a posteriori mean +/- standard deviation). For further information about analysis methodology and the contents of this alert, refer to the LIGO/Virgo Public Alerts User Guide . [1] Messick et al. PRD 95, 042001 (2017) [2] Singer & Price PRD 93, 024013 (2016)