Related papers: Reducing the Athena WFI charged particle backgroun…
The Wide Field Imager (WFI) flying on Athena will usher in the next era of studying the hot and energetic Universe. WFI observations of faint, diffuse sources will be limited by uncertainty in the background produced by high-energy…
The Wide Field Imager (WFI) is one of two instruments for the Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (Athena). In this paper we summarise three of the many key science objectives for the WFI - the formation and growth of…
The Wide Field Imager (WFI) is one of the two scientific instruments proposed for the Athena+ X-ray observatory. It will provide imaging in the 0.1-15 keV band over a wide field, simultaneously with spectrally and time-resolved photon…
X-ray transients are among the most enigmatic objects in the cosmic sky. The unpredictability and underlying nature of their transient behavior has prompted much study in recent years. While significant progress has been made in this field,…
The ATHENA X-ray Observatory-IXO is a planned multinational orbiting X-ray observatory with a focal length of 11.5m. ATHENA aims to perform pointed observations in an energy range from 0.1 keV to 15 keV with high sensitivity. For high…
The WFI (Wide Field Imager) instrument is planned to be one of two complementary focal plane cameras on ESA's next X-ray observatory Athena. It combines unprecedented survey power through its large field of view of 40 amin x 40 amin…
X-ray observations are limited by the background, due to intrinsic faintness or diffuse nature of the sources. The future Athena X-ray observatory has among its goals the characterization of these sources. We aim at characterizing the…
The level and uncertainty of the particle induced background in CCD detectors plays a crucial role for future X-ray instruments, such as the Wide Field Imager (WFI) onboard Athena. To mitigate the background systematic uncertainties, which…
ATHENA, with a launch foreseen in 2028 towards the L2 orbit, addresses the science theme "The Hot and Energetic Universe", coupling a high-performance X-ray Telescope with two complementary focal-plane instruments. One of these, the X-ray…
Space-based X-ray detectors are subject to significant fluxes of charged particles in orbit, notably energetic cosmic ray protons, contributing a significant background. We develop novel machine learning algorithms to detect charged…
X-ray telescopes opened up a new window into the high-energy universe. However, the last generation of these telescopes encountered an unexpected problem: their optics focused not only X-rays but low-energy (so called soft) protons as well.…
The properties (temperature, density, chemical composition, velocity) of hot astrophysical plasma and the physical processes affecting them (heating/cooling, turbulence, shocks, acceleration) can be probed by high resolution X-ray…
The Wide Field Imager (WFI), one of two instruments on ESA's next large X-ray mission Athena, is designed for imaging spectroscopy of X-rays in the range of 0.2 to 15 keV with a large field of view and high count rate capability. The focal…
Both the interplanetary space and the Earth magnetosphere are populated by low energy ($\leq300$ keV) protons that are potentially able to scatter on the reflecting surface of Wolter-I optics of X-ray focusing telescopes and reach the focal…
The sensitivity of astronomical X-ray detectors is limited by the instrumental background. The background is especially important when observing low surface brightness sources that are critical for many of the science cases targeted by…
The depleted p-channel field effect transistor is the chosen sensor type for the Wide Field Imager of the Athena mission. It will be used in two types of cameras. One will enable observations of a field of view of 40' x 40' by using an…
The Wide Field Imager for the Athena X-ray telescope is composed of two back side illuminated detectors using DEPFET sensors operated in rolling shutter readout mode: A large detector array featuring four sensors with 512x512 pixels each…
A detailed characterization of the particle induced background is fundamental for many of the scientific objectives of the Athena X-ray telescope, thus an adequate knowledge of the background that will be encountered by Athena is desirable.…
The anticipated high sensitivity and the science goals of the next generation X-ray space missions, like the International X-ray Observatory or Simbol-X, rely on a low instrumental background, which in turn requires optimized shielding…
Athena is an X-ray observatory-class mission concept, developed from April to December 2011 as a result of the reformulation exercise for L-class mission proposals in the framework of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. Athena's science case is…