About EGO

EGO, the European Gravitational Observatory, located in the countryside near Pisa in the Commune of Cascina, was created 20 years ago (11 December 2000) by the “Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique” (CNRS), a French public, scientific and technological institution, and the Italian “Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare” (INFN). The NIKHEF Laboratory (Netherlands) joined in 2007 with an observer status.

EGO’s goal is to ensure the long-term scientific exploitation of the Virgo antenna for gravitational waves detection as well as to foster European and global collaboration in the field.

More specifically, the goals of EGO are:

• the construction, maintenance, operation and upgrade of the Virgo interferometer and the site infrastructures, including a computing and data centre;
• the representation of the consortium at the regional, national, European and global level;
• the promotion of interdisciplinary studies, research and development, industrial applications, education, citizen’s science, communication and outreach.

The scientific responsibility of the Virgo antenna is assumed by the Virgo collaboration. Today, the Virgo collaboration counts more than 500 members, with participating scientists and engineers from over 30 laboratories and a total of 99 institutions from France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Spain and Germany.