0000000000247818
AUTHOR
Gregor Rauw
ATHENA WFI optical blocking filters development status toward the end of the instrument phase-A
Copyright 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited. The Wide Field Imager (WFI) is one of the two instruments of the ATHENA astrophysics space mission approved by ESA as the second large mission in the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Science Programme. The WFI, based on a large array of depleted field effect transistors (DEPFET), will provide imaging in the 0.2-15 keV band over a 40'x40' field of view, simultaneously with spectrally an…
The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU)
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2016, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
The filter wheel and filters development for the X-IFU instruments onboard Athena
Athena is the large mission selected by ESA in 2013 to investigate the science theme “Hot and Energetic Universe” and presently scheduled for launch in 2028. One of the two instruments located at the focus of the 12 m-long Athena telescope is the X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU). This is an array of TES microcalorimeters that will be operated at temperatures of 50 mK in order to perform high resolution spectroscopy with an energy resolution down to 2.5 eV at energies < 7 keV. In order to cope with the large dynamical range of X-ray fluxes spanned by the celestial objects Athena will be observing, the X-IFU will be equipped with a filter wheel. This will allow the user to fine tune the i…
ATHENA X-IFU thermal filters development status toward the end of the instrument phase-A
Copyright 2018 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited. The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) is one of the two instruments of the Athena astrophysics space mission approved by ESA in the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Science Programme. The X-IFU consists of a large array of transition edge sensor micro-calorimeters that will operate at 100 mK inside a sophisticated cryostat. A set of thin filters, highly transparent to X-rays, will be m…
The optical blocking filter for the ATHENA wide field imager: Ongoing activities towards the conceptual design
ATHENA is the L2 mission selected by ESA to pursue the science theme "Hot and Energetic Universe" (launch scheduled in 2028). One of the key instruments of ATHENA is the Wide Field Imager (WFI) which will provide imaging in the 0.1-15 keV band over a 40'x40' large field of view, together with spectrally and time-resolved photon counting. The WFI camera, based on arrays of DEPFET active pixel sensors, is also sensitive to UV/Vis photons. Optically generated electron-hole pairs may degrade the spectral resolution as well as change the energy scale by introducing a signal offset. For this reason, the use of an X-ray transparent optical blocking filter is needed to allow the observation of all …
The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit: a consolidated design for the system requirement review of the preliminary definition phase
The Athena X-ray Integral Unit (X-IFU) is the high resolution X-ray spectrometer, studied since 2015 for flying in the mid-30s on the Athena space X-ray Observatory, a versatile observatory designed to address the Hot and Energetic Universe science theme, selected in November 2013 by the Survey Science Committee. Based on a large format array of Transition Edge Sensors (TES), it aims to provide spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy, with a spectral resolution of 2.5 eV (up to 7 keV) over an hexagonal field of view of 5 arc minutes (equivalent diameter). The X-IFU entered its System Requirement Review (SRR) in June 2022, at about the same time when ESA called for an overall X-IFU redesign (i…
The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, design and expected performances
THESEUS is a space mission concept aimed at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics. These goals will be achieved through a unique combination of instruments allowing GRB and X-ray transient detection over a broad field of view (more than 1sr) with 0.5¿1 arcmin localization, an energy band extending from several MeV down to 0.3¿keV and high sensitivity to transient sources in the soft X-ray domain, as well as on-board prompt (few minutes) follow-up with a 0.7¿m class IR telescope with both imaging and spectroscopic capabilities. THESEUS will be perfectly suited for addressing …
The ATHENA X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU)
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2018, Austin, Texas, United States.