Overview

• Volunteers in the Kilonova Seekers project identified GOTO0650’s 2,500-fold brightening just 3.5 hours after data capture by GOTO telescope arrays in Spain and Australia.
• The object was classified as a cataclysmic variable star in its rare period bouncer stage following spectroscopy, X-ray, UV measurements and amateur photometry.
• Follow-up observations from Swift, Einstein Probe and amateur astronomers provided one of the most complete early datasets on a transient outburst.
• With over 2.8 million classifications since its July 2023 launch, Kilonova Seekers demonstrates a scalable model for real-time survey analysis as data volumes expand.
• The project’s optical alert pipeline bolsters gravitational-wave counterpart searches and remains active for ongoing transient discoveries.