Related papers: Mitigating the effects of particle background on t…
One of the science goals of the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on ESA's Athena X-ray observatory is to map hot gas structures in the universe, such as clusters and groups of galaxies and the intergalactic medium. These deep observations of faint…
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…
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 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…
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 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 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…
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…
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…
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 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 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…
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…
Ground-based observations at thermal infrared wavelengths suffer from large background radiation due to the sky, telescope and warm surfaces in the instrument. This significantly limits the sensitivity of ground-based observations at…
In this paper we are going to review the latest estimates for the particle background expected on the X-IFU instrument onboard of the ATHENA mission. The particle background is induced by two different particle populations: the so called…
Methods.There are no experimental data about the background experienced by microcalorimeters in the L2 orbit, and thus the particle background levels were calculated by means of Monte Carlo simulations: we considered the original design…
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 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…
Bringing artificial intelligence (AI) alongside next-generation X-ray imaging detectors, including CCDs and DEPFET sensors, enhances their sensitivity to achieve many of the flagship science cases targeted by future X-ray observatories,…
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…