HETGS Observtion of a Gravitational Wave Transient

Mergers of compact objects in tight binaries are now known to be sources of detectable gravitational wave (GW) emission. The first detection was obtained in 2015 of the merger of a black hole binary and in 2017 was the first detection of a neutron star binary merger. Spectroscopy can elucidate the nature of the merger to determine environmental circumstances or find ultrafast outflows. Initial error regions may be very large, so we will use a secure identification with a bright X-ray source using Swift or another X-ray telescope before triggering this TOO using the HETGS.