Related papers: The monochromatic X-rays facilities at NIM
The science goals for ground-based large-area surveys, such as the Dark Energy Survey, Pan-STARRS, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, require calibration of broadband photometry that is stable in time and uniform over the sky to…
Measuring the Cosmic X-ray Background (CXB) is a key to understand the Active Galactic Nuclei population, their absorption distribution and their average spectra. However, hard X-ray instruments suffer from time-dependent backgrounds and…
We compare several different ways of measuring the energy resolution for meV-resolved inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS): using scattering from poly(methyl methacrylate), PMMA, using scattering from borosilicate glass (Tempax), and using…
The Gas Pixel Detector, recently developed and continuously improved by Pisa INFN in collaboration with IASF-Roma of INAF, can visualize the tracks produced within a low Z gas by photoelectrons of few keV. By reconstructing the impact point…
We describe measurements of the mirror vignetting in the XMM-Newton Observatory made in-orbit, using observations of SNR G21.5-09 and SNR 3C58 with the EPIC imaging cameras. The instrument features that complicate these measurements are…
We developed the X-ray, Gamma-ray and Relativistic Electron detector (XGRE) onboard the TARANIS satellite, to investigate high-energy phenomena associated with lightning discharges such as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and terrestrial…
Cosmological constraints from clusters rely on accurate gravitational mass estimates, which strongly depend on cluster gas temperature measurements. Therefore, systematic calibration differences may result in biased, instrument-dependent…
We report the development of a laboratory-based Rowland-circle monochromator that incorporates a low poer x-ray (bremsstrahlung) tube source, a spherically-bent crystal analyzer (SBCA), and an energy-resolving solid-state detector. This…
X-ray polarimetry promises to give new information about high-energy astrophysical sources, such as binary black hole systems, micro-quasars, active galactic nuclei, and gamma-ray bursts. We designed, built and tested a hard X-ray…
The XMM-Newton observatory has the largest collecting area flown so far for an X-ray imaging system, resulting in a very high sensitivity over a broad spectral range. In order to exploit fully these performances, a very accurate calibration…
Monochromators and analyzers for X-rays of energy $>$ 5 keV are overwhelmingly made from silicon crystals, of which large specimens of high purity and low defect density are readily available. Germanium and diamond crystals are also…
The gamma-ray astronomical observatory INTEGRAL, succesfully launched on 17th October 2002, carries two large gamma-ray telescopes. One of them is the coded-mask imaging gamma-ray telescope onboard the INTEGRAL satellite (IBIS) which…
ESA's hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray observatory INTEGRAL is covering the 3 keV to 10 MeV energy band, with excellent sensitivity during long and uninterrupted observations of a large field of view (~100 square degrees), with ms time…
Early results from the INTEGRAL Core Program, for a sample of eight persistently bright neutron star low mass X-ray binaries in the energy range from 5 keV to 200 keV are presented. It is shown that INTEGRAL efficiently detects sources and…
X-ray calorimeters routinely achieve very high spectral resolution, typically a few eV full width at half maximum (FWHM). Measurements of calorimeter line shapes are usually dominated by the natural linewidth of most laboratory calibration…
We have previously argued that targeted interstellar communication has a physical optimum at narrowband X-ray wavelengths $\lambda\approx1\,$nm, limited by the surface roughness of focusing devices at the atomic level (arXiv:1711.05761). We…
XPoSat is India's first X-ray spectro-polarimetry mission, consisting of two co-aligned instruments, a polarimeter (POLIX) and a spectrometer (XSPECT), to study the X-ray emission from celestial sources. Since polarimetry is a photon-hungry…
Since the birth of X-ray astronomy, spectral, spatial and timing observation improved dramatically, procuring a wealth of information on the majority of the classes of the celestial sources. Polarimetry, instead, remained basically…
Improvements in the precision of the astrophysical flux scale are needed to answer fundamental scientific questions ranging from cosmology to stellar physics. The unexpected discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating was…
The X-ray spectra of Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXB) can change on short time-scales, making it difficult to follow their spectral characteristics in detail through model fitting. Colour-colour (C-C) diagrams are therefore often used as…