At the present time in the Shamakhy Astrophysical Observatory named after N.Tusi of ANAS (ShAO) serious works are being done to involve young researchers in actual problems of science, as well as to increase the observatory's international cooperation and integration into to the world science. In this regard, organised by the supervisor of the head of ShAO department “Galaxies and star formation processes”, dr.of Sciences, professor Nariman İsmayilov the group is included four young scientists carried out the collaboration in the international network "Global Rapid Advanced Network Devoted to the Multi-messenger Addicts" (GRANDMA) (https://grandma.lal.in2p3.fr/). GRANDMA, an international network, has been operating for only a year, although the project involves 25 telescopes from 12 different countries of the world for spectral and photometric observations. The purpose of the observations is to record the transient events that occur in the universe due to gravitational waves in a large part of the sky, and to observe the residual events in which they first occurred in the optical range. The observation and research of such unique physical phenomena is of great importance in astrophysics of binary populations but also for testing physics laws under extreme conditions. The combination of two neutron stars or a pair of neutron stars and black holes merger creates strong gravitational waves signal with possible electromagnetic signature of matter ejected and across the full electromagnetic spectrum. Gravitational waves are detected by LIGO and Virgo Gravitational Wave Observatories. The difference arrival time of the wave at the sites allows a rough localization of the event by triangulation up to thousands of degree squares. Online analyses of the LIGO-Virgo are tracking any gravitational wave from events happening in the all sky and release instantaneous alerts.  As soon as this information is received, the telescopes are activated simultaneously to observe complementary portions of the GW sky localization area to track new optical sources associated to the GW event. An extensive infrastructure and software complex has been created in the network for this purpose.          

GRANDMA has developed a citizen science program called kilonova-catcher (https://grandma-kilonovacatcher.lal.in2p3.fr/). It allows non-professional astronomers to contribute their observational capabilities to the GRANDMA network, in order to perform optical follow-up of GW candidates on a best-effort basis.

During the third observing run (from April 2019 to March 2020), GRANDMA has followed-up about 90% of the GW alerts during O3, covering about 50 alerts, including BBHs, to demonstrate our global coordination system. We can highlight the second binary neutron star collision GW190425 or the mysterious GW190814 event revealing a source found in the so-called “mass gap” between neutron stars and black holes. While GRANDMA as others networks (the  Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen and  Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer) did not find any optical counterpart of gravitational events so far, intensive observations are useful to add constraints on ejected material during those phenomena (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-019-1003-9).

At present, scientists of our observatory within the GRANDMA network are co-authors of two collective articles published in the prestigious monthly scientific journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of England (IF ~ 5.5). These publications provide information about the 2 m and 60 cm telescopes, light receivers and observation capabilities connected to the GRANDMA network of our observatory. These articles also used very unique images taken at the observatory. To obtain such images, a special optical reducer is installed in the T60 telescope of our observatory. Thanks to him, it was possible to observe objects up to the brightness of the 19 magnitude.

The articles are co-authored by 4 young employees of our observatory, V. Zumrud, S. Jannat, A. Shabnam, A. Sabahaddin and the organizer and head of the group, professor N.Z. Ismailov. V. Zumrud and A. Shabnam took part in the consortium's cooperation workshops in Spain and Tbilisi, where they made reports. In addition, 6-7 news items co-authored by our employees have already been published in the project news.

Sarah Antier (APC, Paris), the head of the project, which seeks to support young astronomers in this field, has appealed to the French Embassy to allocate funds for internships abroad. At present, various work is being done on this topic.

Link to the GRANDMA articles: https://grandma.lal.in2p3.fr/publications/

Link to the press: https://grandma.lal.in2p3.fr/press-and-media/

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