New NASA Telescope Will Provide X-Ray Views of the Universe (nytimes.com) 15
A brand-new space telescope will soon reveal a hidden vision of the cosmos, potentially transforming our understanding of black holes, supernovas and even the nature of the universe itself. No, not that one. From a report: Much attention is being devoted this month to the James Webb Space Telescope, from NASA and the European Space Agency, which is set to launch on Dec. 22. But a more exclusive cadre of astronomers watched excitedly on Thursday during the trip to space of a smaller, but also transformative, observatory. NASA launched the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE mission, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft cost a mere $188 million, compared with the James Webb's mammoth budget of $9.7 billion, and is expected to demonstrate a new form of astronomy. It will, for the first time, perform imaging X-ray polarimetry in orbit, a technique that could offer astronomers insights that no other telescope can match.
"It's giving us information about some of the most bizarre and exciting objects in space," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. IXPE (pronounced by the mission team as "ix-pee") was placed into an orbit 340 miles above Earth after its launch. The telescope will spend several weeks there deploying its scientific instruments and testing its equipment, then begin its two-year mission. X-rays are a useful way to observe the universe. Emitted from extremely energetic objects, they allow astronomers to probe events -- superheated jets near black holes or explosions of stars, for example -- in a way other wavelengths, such as visible light, cannot. But X-rays can be studied only from space because they are mostly absorbed by Earth's atmosphere. A variety of dedicated X-ray space telescopes and instruments have launched to orbit, most notably NASA's Chandra X-ray and ESA's XMM-Newton observatories, which both launched in 1999. With spacecraft like these, scientists have unveiled the birthplaces of stars inside gaseous nebulas and mapped the spread of dark matter in clusters of galaxies, among other pioneering work.
"It's giving us information about some of the most bizarre and exciting objects in space," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. IXPE (pronounced by the mission team as "ix-pee") was placed into an orbit 340 miles above Earth after its launch. The telescope will spend several weeks there deploying its scientific instruments and testing its equipment, then begin its two-year mission. X-rays are a useful way to observe the universe. Emitted from extremely energetic objects, they allow astronomers to probe events -- superheated jets near black holes or explosions of stars, for example -- in a way other wavelengths, such as visible light, cannot. But X-rays can be studied only from space because they are mostly absorbed by Earth's atmosphere. A variety of dedicated X-ray space telescopes and instruments have launched to orbit, most notably NASA's Chandra X-ray and ESA's XMM-Newton observatories, which both launched in 1999. With spacecraft like these, scientists have unveiled the birthplaces of stars inside gaseous nebulas and mapped the spread of dark matter in clusters of galaxies, among other pioneering work.
Re: (Score:2)
https://chandra.harvard.edu/ [harvard.edu]
"It will, for the first time, perform imaging X-ray polarimetry **in orbit**, a technique that could offer astronomers insights that no other telescope can match."
Re:Chandra already did this (Score:4, Insightful)
No. (Score:5, Informative)
Criminy. RTFA.
This provides x ray polarimetry which has been lacking in current and previous x ray observation platforms.
IXPE proposal pretty much explains it but here is a bit of the executive summary:
... polarimetry adds two more observables, in addition to the position, energy and arrival time of every photon: the degree and angle of polarization. The former gives direct insight in to the emission mechanism and the geometry of the source, while the latter may often provide the only way to measure the orientation of the system ...
proposal link (Score:1)
For some reason the link did not take:
IXPE Proposal [esa.int]
Re: Chandra already did this (Score:5, Funny)
How does it feel to hit your intellectual limit so early in the day? Do you just go, "Well, that's enough thinking, it's time for breakfast," or what?
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Hey, they remembered to hit the "don't put my internet name on this because I'm ashamed of my intellectual effluent" button. That's always a win.
Scientists will see through our clothes! (Score:2)
Oh, the horror!
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Superman was a voyeur.
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In his defense, though, Lois DID ask him what color her underwear was.
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Yes, I immediately reminisced to those silly comic book ads for the x-ray glasses that would allow us to see through women's cloths.
Will Webb ever produce an image? (Score:2)
What are the current Vegas odds on the JWT actually launching successfully, making it to the Lagrange point, deploying and working as designed?
Expensive Inclination Change (Score:4, Insightful)
After launching from the Cape the upper stage and payload were at something like a 28.5 degree inclination. To tilt that back down to being just over the equator required 3.5 to 3.7km/s of deltaV, or change in speed.
That's enough of a burn to go from Earth to the Moon. You can certainly impact it with that much, might be able to slip into orbit even.
It never seems like it would take that much energy to tilt an orbit, but oh boy, it does.
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The observatory was originally planned to launch on a Pegasus, which could launch right on the equator. But Falcon 9 was cheaper, even with the inclination change. And they had more room in the fairing to reduce the number of bits that needed to deploy in orbit.