A joint Chinese and European X-ray telescope mission has been convened Einstein probe successfully views the universe in widescreen, with a telescope design that mimics the eyes of lobsters.
Einstein probe, that one launched on January 9 aboard a Chinese Long March rocket, is currently undergoing testing and calibration of its instruments as it orbits the Earth at an altitude of 600 kilometers (373 miles). The first observations were revealed during a symposium in Beijing.
The problem with X-rays is that they contain so much energy that they are difficult to capture with a standard detector. Lenses don’t work because x-rays are too powerful to be refracted easily, and an x-ray taken face-first onto a mirror simply passes through that mirror. Instead, X-ray detection is only possible when these rays hit a reflective surface at a shallow angle. From there, the beams can be directed toward an X-ray-specific detector. However, this mechanism presents a small problem. It means that an X-ray telescope can typically only detect X-rays along a narrow field of view; outside that field of view, X-rays would be incident at too great an angle.
It turns out that lobsters are the solution – lobster vision, that is. Furthermore, scientists adopted this basic idea in the late 1970s, but it took decades for this idea to be successfully adapted for use on X-ray telescopes in space.
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Human eyes work on the principle of refraction through a lens, also called the cornea. Cancers, on the other hand, use reflection. Their eyes are a composite of small tubes arranged as parallel square pores on the surface of their eyes, with each tube pointing in a different direction. Light enters the tubes and is reflected to the retina. While the human field of vision covers a field of view of about 120 degrees, lobsters have a panoramic vision of 180 degrees.
Lobster eye X-ray vision has previously been used on missions studying the solar wind, on interplanetary missions and on a technology demonstration mission called LEIA (Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy) in 2022. However, Einstein Probe is the first to use lobster eye optics in a space telescope. The Wide-field , equal to one eleventh of the air, in one shot. In just three orbits, WXT can image the entire sky in X-rays.
WXT is looking for things that happen at night: so-called X-ray transients, which are often random or one-off events, such as the flaring of a star or a sleeping star. black hole sudden burst of activity upon swallowing a small piece of matter. It also includes phenomena like exploding stars and merge neutron stars which are the source gravitational waves reverberates throughout the cosmos. This wide field of view should therefore allow WXT to greatly increase our knowledge of these transients.
To complement WXT’s panoramic view, Einstein Probe also carries a second telescope on board, known as the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT), a more traditional X-ray detector with a narrower field of view. FXT provides more detailed close-up observations of any transients discovered by WXT.
Even though it is still in the testing phase, WXT in particular is already proving its purpose. The Beijing symposium revealed that WXT discovered its first X-ray transient on February 19, an event related to a long gamma ray burst produced by the destruction of a massive star. Since then, WXT has discovered another 141 transients, including 127 stars that produce X-ray flares.
FXT has also been busy during this trial period following up on an X-ray transient discovered on March 20 – by WXT, no less – and imaging several known objects in X-rays, including a supernova remnant called Puppis A and the giant globular cluster Omega Centauri.
“I am thrilled with the first observations from Einstein Probe, which demonstrate the mission’s ability to study large expanses of X-ray skies and quickly discover new celestial sources,” said Carole Mundell, scientific director of the European Space Agency. in a rack. “These early data give us a tantalizing glimpse into the high-energy dynamic universe that will soon come within reach of our scientific communities.”
“It is amazing that, even though the instruments were not yet fully calibrated, we were already able to perform a time-critical follow-up observation using the FXT instrument of a fast X-ray transient first spotted by WXT,” said Erik Kuulkers, who conducted the project scientist for the European Space Agency’s Einstein Probe. “It shows what Einstein Probe will be capable of during its research.”
That study will initially last three years and will start in June once the tests are officially completed. The data released at the recent symposium is a preview of what exactly we can expect.
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Einstein Probe is a collaboration between not only the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the European Space Agency, but also the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany and the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) in France. The discoveries will provide a huge catalog of objects for the upcoming European mission NewAthena (Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics), which is currently in the study phase. This instrument, which will be the most powerful X-ray telescope ever built, is expected to be launched around 2037.