Related papers: X-ray Scattering Echoes and Ghost Halos from the I…
High resolution X-ray imaging offers a unique opportunity to probe the nature of dust in the z ~< 2 universe. Dust grains 0.1- 1 um in size will scatter soft X-rays, producing a diffuse "halo" image around an X-ray point source, with a…
The exquisite angular resolution available with Chandra should allow precision measurements of faint diffuse emission surrounding bright sources, such as the X-ray scattering halos created by interstellar dust. However, the ACIS CCDs suffer…
Scattering and absorption of X-rays by interstellar dust is calculated for a model consisting of carbonaceous grains and amorphous silicate grains. The calculations employ realistic dielectric functions with structure near X-ray absorption…
We consider the absorption and scattering of X-rays observed from the Galactic center. One objective is to characterize the intrinsic X-ray emission from the central black hole, SgrA*, in its quiescent and flaring states. We correct the…
Gamma-ray bursts are now known to be a cosmological population of objects, which are often accompanied by X-ray and optical afterglows. The total energy emitted in the afterglow can be similar to the energy radiated in the gamma-ray burst…
We calculate the scattering of X-rays by interstellar dust, for a dust model that reproduces the observed wavelength-dependent extinction and polarization of starlight. On interstellar sightlines that produce appreciable starlight…
Small angle scatterings of X-rays by interstellar dust particles create halos around x-ray sources. By observing these halos with sufficient angular resolution it is possible to derive information about both the spatial distribution of the…
X-ray photons coming from an X-ray point source not only arrive at the detector directly, but also can be strongly forward-scattered by the interstellar dust along the line of sight (LOS), leading to a detectable diffuse halo around the…
X-ray photons scattered by the interstellar medium carry information about dust distribution, dust grain model, scattering cross section, and the distance of the source; they also take longer time than unscattered photons to reach the…
We analyze a sample of 58 multi-wavelength, Very Long Baseline Array observations of active galactic nuclei (AGN) to determine their scattering properties. Approximately 75% of the sample consists of AGN that exhibit centimeter-wavelength…
The detection of new clusters of galaxies or the study of known clusters of galaxies in X-rays can be complicated by the presence of X-ray point sources, the majority of which will be active galactic nuclei (AGN). This can be addressed by…
Scattering by dust grains in our Galaxy can produce X-ray halos, visible as expanding rings, around GRBs. This has been observed in three GRBs to date, allowing to derive accurate distances for the dust clouds as well as some constraints on…
We present observations of the X-ray halo around the LMXB GX 13+1 from the Chandra X-ray telescope. The halo is caused by scattering in interstellar dust grains, and we use it to diagnose the line-of-sight position, size distribution, and…
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) produce a dominant fraction (~80%) of the Soft X-ray background (SXB) at photon energies 0.5<E<2 keV. If dust pervaded throughout the intergalactic medium, its scattering opacity would have produced diffuse…
We use published ROSAT observations of the X-ray Nova V1974 Cygni 1992 to test a model for interstellar dust, consisting of a mixture of carbonaceous grains and silicate grains. The time-dependent X-ray emission from the nova is modelled,…
We studied the X-ray dust scattering halos around 17 bright X-ray point sources using {\it Chandra} data. We use an iterative method to resolve the halos at small scattering angles from the zeroth order data in CC-mode or the first order…
There are observational facts and theoretical arguments for an origin of gamma-ray bursts in molecular clouds in distant galaxies. If this is true, one could detect a significant flux of GRB prompt and early afterglow X-ray radiation…
Dust grains scatter X-ray light through small angles, producing a diffuse halo image around bright X-ray point sources situated behind a large amount of interstellar material. We present analytic solutions to the integral for the dust…
Only a small fraction of galactic nuclei in the nearby universe are luminous; most of them are currently dim. We investigate the feasibility of constraining the X-ray luminosity in the recent past (up to ~10^6 years ago) of the nucleus of a…
We re-investigated the distance to the black hole X-ray binary 4U 1630-47 by analyzing its dust scattering halo (DSH) using high-resolution X-ray (Chandra) and millimeter (APEX) observations. Dust scattering halos form when X-rays from a…