by It is called the joint mission of the Chinese and European X-ray telescopes Einstein’s explorer it manages to see the universe in widescreen, with a telescope design that mimics the eyes of a lobster.
Einstein Probe, a launched on 9 January aboard the Chinese Long March rocket, its instruments are currently being tested and calibrated as it orbits the Earth at an altitude of 600 kilometers (373 miles). His first comments were revealed at a symposium in Beijing.
The problem with X-rays is that they are so high in energy that they are difficult to capture with a standard detector. Lenses don’t work because X-rays are too powerful to be easily refracted, and X-rays that hit a mirror face-on will simply pass through that mirror. Rather, X-rays can only be detected when these rays strike a reflective surface at a shallow angle. From there, the rays can be directed towards a specific X-ray detector. However, this mechanism creates a bit of a problem. It means that an X-ray telescope can usually only detect X-rays along a narrow field of view; Outside that field of view, X-rays would hit at too great an angle.
As it turns out, lobsters are the solution – lobster vision, that is. Furthermore, scientists have been toying with this basic idea since the late 1970s, but it took many years to successfully adapt that idea for use on X-ray telescopes in space.
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Human eyes operate on the principle of refraction through a lens, and the cornea. On the other hand, lobsters use reflection. The eyes are a combination of tiny tubes arranged as parallel square pores on the surface of the eye, each tube pointing in a different direction. Light enters the tubes and is reflected down to the retina. While human vision encompasses a field of about 120 degrees, lobsters have a 180 degree panoramic field of view.
Lobster X-ray vision has previously been deployed on missions studying the solar wind, interplanetary missions, and a technology demonstrator mission known as LEIA (Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy) in 2022. However, Einstein Probe is the first to employ lobster eye optics in a space telescope. Its Wide Field X-ray Telescope (WXT) borrows from a lobster eye design, with hundreds of thousands of tubes arranged in 12 modules positioned so that the WXT can take in a field of view that spans more than 3,600 square degrees. , equal to the eleventh part of the sky, in one shot. In just three orbits, WXT can image the entire sky in X-rays.
WXT is looking for things that go bump in the night: so-called X-ray bursts, which are often random or one-off events such as a burning or dormant star black hole suddenly lighting up with activity when a small parcel of material is swallowed. It also includes phenomena like exploding stars and merge neutron stars they are the source of gravitational waves reverberating throughout the cosmos. 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, called the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT), which is a more traditional X-ray detector with a narrower field of view. FXT provides more detailed observations of any transient detected by WXT.
Although still in the testing phase, WXT in particular is already proving its purpose. The symposium in Beijing revealed that WXT received its first transient X-rays on February 19, an event involving long gamma-ray burst produced by the destruction of a giant star. Since then, WXT has discovered 141 more transients, including 127 stars emitting X-ray flares.
FXT has also been busy during this trial period by following up on X-ray transients detected on Mark 20 — at least by the WXT — as well as X-ray imaging several known objects, with includes a supernova remnant known as Pupil A and the giant globular cluster Omega Centauri.
“I am excited to see the first observations from Einstein Probe, which demonstrate the mission’s ability to study a wide area of the X-ray sky and quickly discover new celestial sources,” said Carole Mundell, who is the Agency’s Science Director. European space, i statement. “These early data give us an exciting glimpse into the dynamic, high-energy universe that will soon be within our scientific communities.”
“Surprisingly, although the instruments were not yet fully calibrated, we could make a time-critical observation using the FXT instrument of a fast X-ray transient first observed by WXT,” a said Erik Kuulkers, who is the European Space Agency’s Project Scientist for Einstein Probe. “It shows what Einstein Probe will be capable of during its survey.”
That survey will initially last three years, and is due to start this June when the test is officially completed. The details released at the recent symposium are a preview of what 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. These 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. Planned to be the most powerful X-ray telescope ever built, the instrument is slated for launch around 2037.
