astro-legacy-archive/gwosc-o1-strain

GWOSC O1 16 kHz gravitational-wave strain

This dataset contains the 16,384 Hz H1 and L1 strain records released by the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center for Advanced LIGO's first observing run (O1). Each detector's 1 Hz data-quality and hardware-injection masks are included as separate configurations so that measurements with different cadences remain separate.

How to use

Install the libraries used in the examples:

python -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install datasets huggingface_hub pyarrow

Load only a bounded row slice. A complete strain configuration contains more than 100 billion rows.

from datasets import load_dataset
mask = load_dataset("astro-legacy-archive/gwosc-o1-strain", "H1-DQmask", split="train", columns=["DQmask"], streaming=True)
print(next(iter(mask))["DQmask"])

For time coordinates and provenance, inspect the self-description embedded in the selected Parquet file rather than inferring time from filenames:

import json
import pyarrow.parquet as pq
from huggingface_hub import hf_hub_download
path = hf_hub_download("astro-legacy-archive/gwosc-o1-strain", "H1-1126137856-1126141952-DQmask.parquet", repo_type="dataset")
print(json.loads(pq.read_metadata(path).metadata[b"timestream"])["sampling"]["sample_rate_hz"])

The sampling object gives gps_start, duration_seconds, sample_rate_hz, sample_count, and the exact row-to-time formula. The ordered sources array maps every source HDF5 file to its interval within the span.

Dataset structure

Each Parquet file represents one contiguous observing span for one detector and one source dataset. Its filename has the form DETECTOR-GPS_START-GPS_STOP-COLUMN.parquet; GPS_STOP is exclusive. The three files with the same detector and GPS bounds contain the strain, data-quality mask, and injection mask for that span.

The complete holding represents 7,565,312 seconds of H1 data and 6,877,184 seconds of L1 data. It is not one gap-free stream: each detector is divided at gaps into its source-defined contiguous spans. Strain files range from about 8.3 MB to 42.3 GB; mask files range from about 37 kB to 2.6 MB.

The source defines DQmask bits 0–6 as DATA, CBC_CAT1, CBC_CAT2, CBC_CAT3, BURST_CAT1, BURST_CAT2, and BURST_CAT3. It defines Injmask bits 0–4 as NO_CBC_HW_INJ, NO_BURST_HW_INJ, NO_DETCHAR_HW_INJ, NO_CW_HW_INJ, and NO_STOCH_HW_INJ. A set bit means that the named test passes or that the named type of hardware injection is absent. Treat each mask value as an integer bit mask, not as one Boolean.

Every file carries an astro-legacy-archive/timestream document in its Parquet schema metadata. It records the sampling rule, detector, represented HDF5 path and attributes, mask definitions, ordered source URLs and checksums, and the command used to regenerate the product. PyArrow exposes this metadata directly; the datasets feature view retains the column types but does not expose the field and schema metadata.

Provenance

The source is GWOSC's O1 16 kHz HDF5 release. There are 1,847 H1 source files and 1,679 L1 source files, each covering 4,096 seconds. The Parquet columns use the source HDF5 leaf names Strain, DQmask, and Injmask.

• —GWOSC O1 release
• —GWOSC O1 dataset archive
• —GWOSC O1/O2 data release DOI

GWOSC also distributes 4 kHz products and other file formats. This repository contains only the 16 kHz HDF5-derived O1 products described above.

Considerations for use

• —Select the DQmask and Injmask configuration for the same detector and GPS interval as the strain being analysed.
• —Decode every 1 Hz mask value covering the analysis interval. A single mask value applies to 16,384 strain samples.
• —Source strain samples may contain IEEE float64 NaNs where strain is not available; consult the masks before scientific use.
• —GPS time does not include leap seconds. Use a GPS-aware time library when converting to UTC.

Licensing and credit

GWOSC publishes this licence statement:

Data from this web site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

GWOSC requests the following acknowledgement:

This research has made use of data or software obtained from the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center (gwosc.org), a service of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the Virgo Collaboration, and KAGRA. This material is based upon work supported by NSF's LIGO Laboratory which is a major facility fully funded by the National Science Foundation, as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Max-Planck-Society (MPS), and the State of Niedersachsen/Germany for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO and construction and operation of the GEO600 detector. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. Virgo is funded, through the European Gravitational Observatory (EGO), by the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and the Dutch Nikhef, with contributions by institutions from Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Monaco, Poland, Portugal, Spain. KAGRA is supported by Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in Japan; National Research Foundation (NRF) and Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) in Korea; Academia Sinica (AS) and National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan.

Citation

Please cite this dataset:

@misc{https://doi.org/10.57967/hf/10265,
  doi = {10.57967/hf/10265},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/astro-legacy-archive/gwosc-o1-strain},
  author = {{Astro Legacy Archive}},
  title = {gwosc-o1-strain},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  year = {2026}
}

Please also cite the GWOSC O1/O2 open-data paper:

@article{Abbott2021GWOSC,
  author = {{LIGO Scientific Collaboration} and {Virgo Collaboration}},
  title = {Open data from the first and second observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo},
  journal = {SoftwareX},
  volume = {13},
  pages = {100658},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1016/j.softx.2021.100658},
  eprint = {1912.11716},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv}
}

Errata and requests

To report an erratum, propose a correction, or ask a question about this dataset, open a Discussion or Pull Request in its Community tab; posting requires a free Hugging Face account. Dataset requests and archive-wide questions may be posted in the Community tab of any dataset.