Science with the Constellation-X Observatory
Abstract
The Constellation X-ray Mission is a high throughput X-ray facility emphasizing observations at high spectral resolution (E/\Delta E \sim 300-3000), and broad energy bandpass (0.25-40 keV). Constellation-X will provide a factor of nearly 100 increase in sensitivity over current high resolution X-ray spectroscopy missions. It is the X-ray astronomy equivalent of large ground-based optical telescopes such as the Keck Observatory and the ESO Very Large Telescope. When observations commence toward the end of next decade, Constellation-X will address many fundamental astrophysics questions such as: the formation and evolution of clusters of galaxies; constraining the baryon content of the Universe; determining the spin and mass of supermassive black holes in AGN; and probing strong gravity in the vicinity of black holes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9901154,
title = {Science with the Constellation-X Observatory},
author = {Azita Valinia and Nicholas White and Harvey Tananbaum and the Constellation-X Team},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9901154},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
to appear in "After the Dark Ages: When Galaxies Were Young", eds. S.S. Holt and E.P. Smith, 4 pages, 1 figure