Related papers: Relativistic Astrophysics Explorer
We present the calibration and background model for the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) aboard the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The energy calibration is systematics limited below 10 keV with deviations from a power-law fit to the…
The SXI telescope is one of the three instruments on board EXIST, a multiwavelength observatory in charge of performing a global survey of the sky in hard X-rays searching for Supermassive Black Holes. One of the primary objectives of EXIST…
The RossiXTE mission provided us with an unprecedentedly large database of X-ray observations of transient black-hole candidates. These systems are crucial for the understanding of the physical properties of mass accretion onto black holes.…
The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) is one of the three instruments on board EXIST, a multi-wavelength observatory in charge of performing a global survey of the sky in hard X-rays searching for Super-massive Black Holes (Grindlay & Natalucci,…
In the past decades, the phenomenology of fast time variations of high-energy flux from black-hole binaries has increased, thanks to the availability of more and more sophisticated space observatories, and a complex picture has emerged.…
We describe the Spectroscopic Time-Resolving Observatory for Broadband Energy X-rays (STROBE-X), a probe-class mission concept that will provide an unprecedented view of the X-ray sky, performing timing and spectroscopy over both a broad…
One of the main objectives of cosmic-ray studies are precise measurements of energy and chemical composition of particles with extreme energies. Large and sophisticated detectors are used to find events seen as showers starting in the…
The International X-ray Observatory (IXO), a joint NASA-ESA-JAXA effort, will address fundamental and timely questions in astrophysics: What happens close to a black hole? How did supermassive black holes grow? How does large scale…
X-ray emission has played a major role in the recent identification of several groups of young, nearby stars. The ROSAT All-Sky Survey (RASS) is due to its spatial completeness an important tool for discovering stellar associations and…
The hard X-ray emission from magnetars and other isolated neutron stars remains under-explored. An instrument with higher sensitivity to hard X-rays is critical to understanding the physics of neutron star magnetospheres and also the…
The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) is under study for the proposed Black Hole Finder Probe, one of the three Einstein Probe missions in NASA's proposed Beyond Einstein Program. EXIST would have unique capabilities: it…
LOFT (Large Observatory for X-ray Timing) is one of the five candidates that were considered by ESA as an M3 mission (with launch in 2022-2024) and has been studied during an extensive assessment phase. It is specifically designed to…
We present the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX), a mission that will produce the sharpest images in the history of astronomy by extending submillimeter Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to space. BHEX will discover and measure the bright…
XEUS is under study by ESA as part of the Horizon 2000+ program to utilize the International Space Station (ISS) for astronomical applications. XEUS will be a long-term X-ray observatory with an initial mirror area of 6m2 at 1 keV that will…
We report on long-term monitoring of anomalous X-ray pulsars (AXPs) using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. Using phase-coherent timing, we find a wide variety of behaviors among the sources, ranging from high stability (in 1E 2259.1+586 and…
The High-Energy Transient Explorer (HETE-2), launched in October 2000, is a satellite experiment dedicated to the study of gamma-ray bursts in a very wide energy range from soft X-ray to gamma-ray wavelengths. The intermediate X-ray range…
The characteristic physical timescales near stellar-mass compact objects are measured in milliseconds. These timescales -- the free-fall time, the fastest stable orbital period, and stellar spin periods -- encode the fundamental physical…
The Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST) is a proposed next generation multi-wavelength survey mission. The primary instrument is a High Energy telescope (HET) that conducts the deepest survey for Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs),…
General relativity predicts that black hole images ought to display a bright, thin (and as-of-yet-unresolved) ring. This "photon ring" is produced by photons that explore the strong gravity of the black hole, flowing along trajectories that…
Ultra Fast Astronomy is a new frontier becoming enabled by improved detector technology allowing discovery of optical transients on millisecond to nanosecond time scales. These may reveal counterparts of energetic processes such as fast…