X-ray Astronomy

What are X-rays?

• A type of light invisible to our eyes

• Ultrasound for medical imaging

• Electrons emitted by radioactive substances

• Lightning produced in thunderstorms

Why do we need satellites to observe X-rays?

• A satellite is closer to the stars

• X-rays cannot pass through the Earth's atmosphere

• X-ray detectors work best in low gravity

• To avoid interference with x-rays in hospitals

What type of space mission is Athena?

• An open X-ray observatory mission

• A NASA mission

• An infrared mission

• An ESA Cosmic Vision mission

Which type of mirror will Athena use?

• 58 nested Wolter I grazing-incidence mirrors

• 4 pairs of nested mirrors coated with Iridium

• 2 identical mirrors formed by 203 mirror foils

• A single large-aperture grazing-incidence mirror utilizing the novel Silicon Pore Optics technology

The new XcatDB (XMM-Newton database of the Strasbourg Observatory) tool developed for the XMM2Athena project, and called AMORA is used to:

• Search for faint, short term variable sources through all the sky observed by XMM-Newton

• Access all the events collected by

  XMM-Newton in the region of interest and process them interactively

• Select the XMM-Newton observations in the regions of the sky with the lowest density of sources

• Add Measurements Of Radio Asteroids detected by XMM-Newton

To study the longer term variability of X-ray sources occurred between XMM-Newton observations, the XMM2Athena project at IRAP/Toulouse has developed an algorithm called:

• EXODUS

• CLAXSON

• STONKS

• FLIX

The Athena/X-IFU will use TES detectors. TES stands for:

• Transition Electronic Sensor

• Temporal Edge Sensor

• Transition Edge Sensor

• Temporal Electronic Sensor

In which energy band will the Athena/WFI provide imaging in a wide field, simultaneously with spectrally and time-resolved photon counting?

• 1-10 eV

• 0.2-15 keV

• 10-100 eV

• 0.2-15 TeV