Dear Einstein@Home volunteers,

the five-year upgrade of the LIGO detectors has been completed and we are a large step closer to the first direct detection of gravitational waves, which will mark the beginning of a new era of astronomy. As we are writing this newsletter, Advanced LIGO is beginning its first observation run â€œO1â€ after an extensive comissioning phase and a series of â€œengineering runsâ€. The Einstein@Home team is truly excited and is looking forward to the most sensitive gravitational-wave data ever recorded.

In the first week of September more than 200 gravitational-wave scientists from the LIGO Virgo Scientific Collaboration gathered in Budapest for their fall meeting. Many Einstein@Home team members were present and reported on their ongoing gravitational-wave searches. During the meeting, the seventh issue of the LIGO Magazine was published, featuring a four page article on Einstein@Home. You can read it for free at [1].

Our second newsletter this year features news from the project administration and updates from our three searches for rapidly rotating neutron stars (through gravitational waves, radio waves, and gamma rays). We are very happy to report three new discoveries! One was made in data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and three were made in data from the Arecibo Radio Telescope. See below for more details on the discoveries.

Note that we are advertising a position for an Einstein@Home computational scientist at UWM in Milwaukee [2]. If you have the required skills and interest, please apply!

(Posted on behalf of) Bruce Allen, Director, Einstein@Home