The small mission A-STAR (All-Sky Transient Astrophysics Reporter) aims to locate the X-ray counterparts to ALIGO and other gravitational wave detector sources, to study the poorly-understood low luminosity gamma-ray bursts, and to find a wide variety of transient high-energy source types, A-STAR will survey the entire available sky twice per 24 hours. The payload consists of a coded mask instrument, Owl, operating in the novel low energy band 4-150 keV, and a sensitive wide-field focussing soft X-ray instrument, Lobster, working over 0.15-5 keV. A-STAR will trigger on ~100 GRBs/yr, rapidly distributing their locations.
@article{arxiv.1302.2542,
title = {A-STAR: The All-Sky Transient Astrophysics Reporter},
author = {J. P. Osborne and P. O'Brien and P. Evans and G. W. Fraser and A. Martindale and J. -L. Atteia and B. Cordier and S. Mereghetti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.2542},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Accepted for the European Astronomical Society Publications Series: Proceedings of the Fall 2012 Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium held in Marbella, Spain, 8-12 Oct 2012