It was called a joint mission of Chinese and European X-ray telescopes Einstein probe is successfully viewing the universe in widescreen, with a telescope design that mimics the eyes of lobsters.
Einstein probe, which released on January 9 aboard a Chinese Long Range rocket, currently undergoing testing and calibration of its instruments as it orbits Earth at an altitude of 600 kilometers (373 miles). His first observations were revealed at a symposium in Beijing.
The problem with X-rays is that they have so much energy that they are difficult to capture with a standard detector. Lenses don’t work because X-rays are too powerful to refract easily, and an X-ray hitting a face-on mirror will simply pass through that mirror. Rather, detection of X-rays is only possible when those rays strike a reflective surface at a shallow angle. From there, the rays can be directed to a specific X-ray detector. However, this mechanism poses a bit of a problem. It means that an X-ray telescope can typically only detect X-rays along a narrow field of view; outside this field of view, the X-rays would hit at too great an angle.
As it turns out, locusts are the solution, i.e. the locust vision. Furthermore, scientists adopted this basic idea in the late 1970s, but it has taken decades to successfully adapt this idea for use in X-ray telescopes in space.
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Human eyes work on the principle of refraction through a lens, also known as the cornea. Locusts, on the other hand, use reflection. Its eyes are composed of tiny tubes arranged like square pores parallel to the surface of its eyes, with each tube pointing in a different direction. Light enters the tubes and is reflected onto the retina. While human vision covers a field of about 120 degrees, locusts have a 180-degree panoramic view.
Lobster-eye X-ray vision has previously been deployed on missions studying the solar wind, on interplanetary missions and on a technology demonstrator mission called READ (Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy) in 2022. The Einstein probe, however, is the first to use lobster eye optics on a space telescope. Its Wide Field X-ray Telescope (WXT) is based on a lobster eye design, with hundreds of thousands of tubes arranged in 12 modules that are positioned so that the WXT can have a field of view of more than 3,600 square degrees. , equal to an eleventh part of the sky, in one plane. In just three orbits, WXT can image the entire sky in X-rays.
WXT is looking for things found at night: so-called X-ray transients, which are often random or one-time events, like a comet flare or a sleeper. black hole it suddenly lights up with activity as it swallows a small packet of matter. It also includes phenomena like exploding stars and fusion neutron stars which are the source gravitational waves reverberating throughout the cosmos. Therefore, this wide field of view should allow WXT to greatly increase our knowledge of these transients.
To complement WXT’s panoramic view, Einstein Probe also carries a second telescope, known as the Tracking X-ray Telescope (FXT), which is a more traditional X-ray detector with a narrower field of view. FXT offers more detailed and close-up observations of any transient discovered by WXT.
Although still in the testing phase, WXT in particular is already proving its purpose. The Beijing symposium revealed that WXT encountered its first X-ray transient on February 19, an event associated with a long burst of gamma rays produced by the destruction of a massive star. Since then, WXT has discovered another 141 transients, including 127 stars that trigger X-ray bursts.
FXT has also been busy during this test period tracking an X-ray transient discovered on March 20—by WXT, no less—as well as imaging several known X-ray objects, including a supernova remnant called Puppis A and the giant globular cluster Omega Centauri.
“I am delighted to see the first observations from the Einstein probe, which show the mission’s ability to survey large areas of the X-ray sky and quickly discover new celestial sources,” said Carole Mundell, the space agency’s director of science. European in a statement. “These early data give us a fascinating glimpse into the dynamic, high-energy universe that will soon be within reach of our scientific communities.”
“It is surprising that although the instruments were not yet fully calibrated, we could already perform a time-critical follow-up observation using the FXT instrument of a fast X-ray transient first detected by WXT,” added Erik Kuulkers, who is the European Space Agency’s Project Scientist for the Einstein probe. “Show what Einstein Probe will be capable of during its survey.”
This survey will have an initial duration of three years and will begin this June once the tests are officially over. The data released at the recent symposium is a preview of what we can expect.
Einstein Probe is a collaboration not only between 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. Their discoveries will provide a large catalog of objects for the next European mission NewAthena (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics), which is currently under study. Planned to be the most powerful X-ray telescope ever built, this instrument is scheduled to launch around 2037.
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