Related papers: Active and passive shielding design optimization a…
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…
In the ROSAT era of the mid-1990's, the problems facing deep X-ray surveys could be largely solved with 10 m class telescopes. In the first decade of this new millennium, with X-ray telescopes such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory and…
Future X-ray telescopes like SIMBOL-X will operate in a wide band of the X-ray spectrum (from 0.1 to 80 keV); these telescopes will extend the optical performances of the existing soft X-ray telescopes to the hard X-ray band, and in…
The hard X-ray sky now being studied by INTEGRAL and Swift and soon by NuSTAR is rich with energetic phenomena and highly variable non-thermal phenomena on a broad range of timescales. The High Energy Telescope (HET) on the proposed…
EXIST is being studied as the Black Hole Finder Probe, one of the 3 Einstein Probe missions under NASA's Beyond Einstein program. The major science goals for EXIST include highly sensitive full-sky hard X-ray survey in a very wide energy…
We present the first results of a search for transient hard X-ray (HXR) emission in the quiet solar corona with the \textit{Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array} (\textit{NuSTAR}) satellite. While \textit{NuSTAR} was designed as an…
Many scientific deliverables of the next generation low frequency radio telescopes require high dynamic range imaging. Next generation telescopes under construction indeed promise at least a ten-fold increase in the sensitivity compared…
Optics for future X-ray telescopes will be characterized by very large aperture and focal length, and will be made of lightweight materials like glass or plastic in order to keep the total mass within acceptable limits. Optics based on thin…
The Constellation X-ray Mission is a high throughput X-ray facility emphasizing observations at high spectral resolution (E/\Delta E \sim 300-3000), and broad energy bandpass (0.25-40 keV). Constellation-X will provide a factor of nearly…
Astronomical imaging with micro-arcsecond ($\mu$as) angular resolution could enable breakthrough scientific discoveries. Previously-proposed $\mu$as X-ray imager designs have been interferometers with limited effective collecting area. Here…
We report NuSTAR observations of a sample of six X-ray weak broad absorption line (BAL) quasars. These targets, at z=0.148-1.223, are among the optically brightest and most luminous BAL quasars known at z<1.3. However, their rest-frame 2…
This paper discusses the broad science case for obtaining milliarcsecond to microarcsecond astronomical imaging resolution in the soft to medium-energy X-ray band (~0.5 to ~8 keV). Astronomy across much of the electromagnetic spectrum has…
The primary instrument of the proposed EXIST mission is a coded mask high energy telescope (the HET), that must have a wide field of view and extremely good sensitivity. It will be crucial to minimize systematic errors so that even for very…
The proposed black-hole finder mission EXIST will consist of multiple wide-field hard X-ray coded-aperture telescopes. The high science goals set for the mission require innovations in telescope design. In particular, wide energy band…
Optical designs for astronomy involve implementation of active optics and adaptive optics from X-ray to the infrared. Developments and results of active optics methods for telescopes, spectrographs and coronagraph planet finders are…
Hard X-/soft gamma-ray astronomy is a crucial field for transient, nuclear and multimessenger astrophysics. However, the spatial localization, imaging capabilities and sensitivity of the measurements are strongly limited for the energy…
We present the preliminary results of a survey that makes use of several deep exposures obtained with the X-Ray telescopes of the BeppoSAX satellite. The survey limiting sensitivity is 5 x 10^-14 cgs in the 2-10 keV band and 7 x 10^-14 cgs…
In astrophysics, several key questions in the hard X soft Gamma-ray range (above 100 keV) require sensitivity and angular resolution that are hardly achievable with current technologies. Therefore, a new kind of instrument able to focus…
The integrated emission of highly obscured AGN is expected to provide a major contribution to the X-ray energy density in the Universe: the X-ray background (XRB). The study of these objects is possible only at energies where the effects of…
Diffractive X-ray telescopes using zone plates, phase Fresnel lenses, or related optical elements have the potential to provide astronomers with true imaging capability with resolution several orders of magnitude better than available in…