Related papers: Hard X-ray/Soft gamma-ray experiments and missions…
One of the few remaining astronomical bands (factor of $\sim$10 in energy range) still without an all-sky imaging survey is the hard x-ray band (10-600 keV). This is in spite of sensitive imaging all-sky surveys already conducted at soft…
This article reviews the present status of high energy gamma-ray astronomy at energies above 30 MeV. Observations in the past decade using both space- and ground-based experiments have been primarily responsible for giving a tremendous…
The energy range of hard X-rays is a key waveband to the study of high energy processes in celestial objects, but still remains poorly explored. In contrast to direct imaging methods used in the low energy X-ray and high energy gamma-ray…
High-energy photons are a powerful probe for astrophysics and for fundamental physics in extreme conditions. During the recent years, our knowledge of the most violent phenomena in the Universe has impressively progressed thanks to the…
Since their first discovery in the late 1960s, Gamma-ray bursts have attracted an exponentially growing interest from the international community due to their central role in the most highly debated open questions of the modern research of…
The discovery of X-ray emission from cosmic sources in the 1960s has opened a new powerful observing window on the Universe. In fact, the exploration of the X-ray sky during the 70s-90s has established X-ray astronomy as a fundamental field…
Gamma-ray Astronomy studies cosmic accelerators through their electromagnetic radiation in the energy range between ~100 MeV and ~100 TeV. The present most sensitive observations in this energy band are performed, from space, by the Large…
High-energy phenomena in the cosmos, and in particular processes leading to the emission of gamma- rays in the energy range 10 MeV - 100 GeV, play a very special role in the understanding of our Universe. This energy range is indeed…
Space-based astronomy of hard X-rays and gamma rays covers more than seven orders of magnitude in photon energy, from 10 keV to several hundred GeV. Detecting cosmic photons in this energy range is a challenge, due to the relatively low…
Over the next decade, we can expect time domain astronomy to flourish at optical and radio wavelengths. In parallel with these efforts, a dedicated transient "machine" operating at higher energies (X-ray band through soft gamma-rays) is…
In this chapter, we briefly review the history of X-ray astronomy through its missions. We follow a temporal development, from the first instruments onboard rockets and balloons to the most recent and complex space missions. We intend to…
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are among the most energetic events in the universe, offering insights into stellar collapse, extreme matter behavior, and cosmic evolution. The advent of multi-messenger astronomy, combining electromagnetic,…
High-energy photons are a powerful probe for astrophysics and for fundamental physics under extreme conditions. During the recent years, our knowledge of the most violent phenomena in the Universe has impressively progressed thanks to the…
The hard x-ray (10-600 keV) sky is inherently time variable and yet has neither been surveyed nor monitored with a sensitive imaging telescope. The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) is a mission concept, proposed for MIDEX,…
Cosmic objects emit throughout the electro-magnetic spectrum, from radio waves to very high-energy gamma rays. Some spectral regions can be observed from the ground, but space instrumentation is needed for most of them. Some spectral…
A fraction of the active supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies in our Universe are capable of launching extreme kiloparsec-long relativistic jets. These jets are known multiband (radio to $\gamma$-ray) and multimessenger…
We present a mission designed for the study of transient phenomena in the high energy sky, through a wide field X-ray/hard X-ray monitor, and fast (< 1 min) follow up observations with Narrow Field Instrumentation. This is based on an X-ray…
One of the most striking astrophysical phenomena today is the existence of cosmic ray particles with energies in excess of 10^20 eV. While their presence has been confirmed by a number of experiments, it is not clear where and how these…
The exhilerating results from Swift in its first year of operations have opened a new era of exploration of the high energy universe. The surge to higher redshifts of the Gamma-ray bursts now imaged with increased sensitivity establishes…
I present an overview of the Swift mission, which was launched on November 20, 2004 to discover and observe the most energetic of astrophysical phenomena, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). After almost 6 years in space the Observatory is in…