Athena: the X-ray observatory to study the hot and energetic Universe

10th International LISA Symposium

Barcons, X.^1 ; Nandra, K.^2 ; Barret, D.^3 ; Den Herder, J.-W.^4 ; Fabian, A.C.^5 ; Piro, L.^6 ; Watson, M.G.^7

Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Santander

39005, Spain^1

Max-Planck Institut für Extraterrestriche Physik, Garching

85741, Germany^2

Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Toulouse

31028, France^3

SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht

3584 CA, Netherlands^4

Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge

CB3 0HA, United Kingdom^5

INAF, Istituto Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome

00133, Italy^6

Dept of Physics and Astronomy, U of Leicester, Leicester

LE1 7RH, United Kingdom^7

关键词: Galaxy clusters;    Integral Field Unit;    Large scale structure of the Universe;    Massive black holes;    Mission concepts;    Science objectives;    Wide field imagers;    X ray observatories;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/610/1/012008/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/610/1/012008

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Hot gas pervades the Universe: about half of the baryonic content in the Universe is expected to be at T > 105K, and there are as many baryons at T > 107trapped in galaxy clusters as there are locked into stars. There is an intimate relation between this hot gas, which delineates the large-scale structure of the Universe, and the most energetic phenomena occurring in the immediate vicinity of super-massive black holes, through a poorly known process called Cosmic Feedback. Studying the hot and energetic universe requires X-ray observatories in space, whose capabilities greatly exceed those of the current workhorse observatories: NASA's Chandra and ESA's XMM- Newton. Athena has been selected by ESA as the L2 mission (due for launch in 2028), to address the "Hot and Energetic Universe" science theme. It will be a large X-ray observatory capable of addressing the above topics, and many other fundamental questions in contemporary astrophysics. Here we present the Athena science objectives, the mission concept and its payload, including the X-ray telescope and its two baseline instruments: a Wide Field Imager (WFI) and an X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU).