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High precision astrometry aims at source position determination to a very small fraction of the diffraction image size, in high SNR regime. One of the key limitations to such goal is the optical response variation of the telescope over a…
Since the discovery of the cosmic X-ray background (CXB), astronomers have strived to understand the accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) contributing to its peak in the 10-40 keV band. Existing soft X-ray telescopes could study this…
The NeXT (New exploration X-ray Telescope), the new Japanese X-ray Astronomy Satellite following Suzaku, is an international X-ray mission which is currently planed for launch in 2013. NeXT is a combination of wide band X-ray spectroscopy…
Imaging terrestrial exoplanets around nearby stars is a formidable technical challenge, requiring the development of coronagraphs to suppress the stellar halo of diffracted light at the location of the planet. In this review, we derive the…
With more than 150 blank sky observations at high Galactic latitude, we make a systematic study to the background of the Low Energy Telescope (LE) of the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (dubbed as Insight-HXMT). Both the on-ground…
We are developing instrumentation for a telescope design capable of measuring linear X-ray polarization over a broad-band using conventional spectroscopic optics. Multilayer-coated mirrors are key to this approach, being used as Bragg…
Sub-angstrom spatial resolution of electron density coupled with sub-femtosecond temporal resolution is required to directly observe the dynamics of the electronic structure of a molecule after photoinitiation or some other ultrafast…
High-redshift Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) beyond redshift $\sim6$ are potentially powerful tools to probe the distant early Universe. Their detections in large numbers and at truly high redshifts call for the next generation of high-energy…
The Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) on board Suzaku covers a wide energy range from 10 keV to 600 keV by combination of silicon PIN diodes and GSO scintillators. The HXD is designed to achieve an extremely low in-orbit back ground based on a…
AGN are known to account for a major portion, if not all, of the cosmic X-ray background radiation. The dominant sharp spectral feature in their spectra is the 6.4 keV fluorescent line of iron, which may contribute to as much as ~ 5-10 % of…
This paper summarizes the development of a successful project, LAUE, supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and devoted to the development of long focal length (up to 100 m) Laue lenses for hard X--/soft gamma--ray astronomy (80-600…
To take advantage of high-resolution optics sensitive to a broad energy range, future X-ray imaging instruments will require thick detectors with small pixels. This pixel aspect ratio affects spectral response in the soft X-ray band, vital…
This paper summarizes some cosmologically interesting measurements which are uniquely possible in the hard X-ray band and presents a mission concept capable of achieving them. The Present Epoch Plus mission will achieve a surface brightness…
Over the last decade, the Imaging Air Cerenkov technique has proven itself to be an extremely powerful means to study very energetic gamma-radiation from a number of astrophysical sources in a regime which is not practically accessible to…
Most neighboring stars are still detected as point sources and are beyond the angular resolution reach of current observatories. Methods to improve our understanding of stars at high angular resolution are investigated. Air Cherenkov…
The soft X-rays (SXRs: 90--150 $\r{A}$) are among the most interesting spectral ranges to be investigated in the next generation of solar missions due to their unique capability of diagnosing phenomena involving hot plasma with temperatures…
Lens time delays are a powerful probe of cosmology, provided that the gravitational potential of the main deflector can be modeled with sufficient precision. Recent work has shown that this can be achieved by detailed modeling of the host…
HEX-P is a probe-class mission concept that will combine high spatial resolution X-ray imaging ($<10"$ FWHM) and broad spectral coverage (0.2-80 keV) with an effective area far superior to current facilities' (including XMM-Newton and…
The Astro2020 Decadal Survey declared that the baryon cycle is one of the top-priority science topics for current astrophysics. Space instruments with both high spectral resolution and high throughput in the ultraviolet are required for…
Ground-based telescopes coupled with adaptive optics (AO) have been playing a leading role in exoplanet direct imaging science and technological development for the past two decades and will continue to have an indispensable role for the…