Motivated by efforts to return humanity to the Moon, three cases are reviewed for X-ray astronomy from the lunar surface: (1) Facilitation of ambitious engineering designs including high throughput telescopes, long focal length optics and X-ray interferometery; (2) Occultation studies and the gain they enable in astrometric precision; (3) Multimessenger time-domain coordinated observations. The potential benefits of, and challenges presented by, operating from the Moon are discussed. Some of these cases have relatively low mass budgets and could be conducted as early pathfinders, while others are more ambitious and will likely need to await improvements in technology or well-developed lunar bases.
@article{arxiv.2310.15215,
title = {X-ray Astronomy from the Lunar Surface},
author = {Poshak Gandhi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.15215},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Invited peer-reviewed article (author version) for a theme issue of Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A on 'Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades (Part 2)' eds. I. Crawford, M. Elvis, J. Silk and J. Zarnecki. Comments/collaboration welcome