On 2017 August 17, the field of multi-messenger astronomy made the big leagues with a dazzling discovery. After several detections of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers with no convincing electromagnetic counterparts, advanced LIGO and Virgo scored their first direct detection of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star merger, an event dubbed GW170817. Soon after the gravitational wave discovery, GW170817 started gifting the astronomical community with an electromagnetic counterpart spanning all bands of the spectrum. Since then, the hunt has been on for more multi-messenger detections of these cosmic fireworks. In this talk, I will review what we have learned from GW170817, what questions remain open, and what are the prospects for future multi-messenger studies of the transient sky.

Multi-messenger time-domain astronomy: GW170817 and the future

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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