2023-08-08 10:15:04
Everything is ready for Japan’s XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory to be launched into space on the 26th of this month (or 25th, depending on the time zone).
XRISM will provide unprecedented insight into some of the hottest places in the universe. And it will do so using an instrument that paradoxically operates at a temperature lower than that of the coldest known place in the cosmos.
“XRISM’s Resolve instrument will allow us to observe the composition of cosmic X-ray sources to a degree that has not been possible before,” said Richard Kelley, principal investigator for NASA’s XRISM science team at the Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Kelley and his colleagues anticipate many new insights into the hottest astronomical objects in the universe, including exploding stars, active galactic nuclei, and the vicinity of black holes in general, among others.
The XRISM Resolve instrument’s detector is only a few hundredths of a degree Celsius above absolute zero. With the name of “absolute zero” is known the lowest temperature that the laws of physics allow, and that is 273.15 degrees Celsius below zero. Said detector is colder than the emptiest and darkest areas of the universe, to which the only heat that reaches it is the little that remains of the Big Bang, the “explosion” with which the universe was born. The detector is also colder than the Boomerang Nebula, the coldest known natural environment.
The instrument, a collaboration between NASA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), must be kept so cold because it works by measuring the small rise in temperature created when X-rays hit its detector. This information makes it possible to deduce how bright the source is in each of several X-ray bands, the equivalent of the colors of visible light, and allows astronomers to identify chemical elements by their unambiguous X-ray “fingerprints” in the spectrum. .
Every point in space where a star is exploding as a supernova is among the hottest in the universe. Pictured is remnants left behind by a 1987 supernova. The image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Space Observatory and the Gemini South Infrared Telescope in Chile. X-ray light detected by Chandra is shown as blue in the image. The infrared light detected by Gemini South is shown in green and red, each of those two colors corresponding to a different band. The band represented in green is more energetic than the one shown in red. The core of the destroyed star remained but is not visible in the image. The ring is produced by the interaction between hot gas (mostly shown in X-rays) and cool dust (mostly shown in infrared light) from the exploded star. (Image: Gemini/NASA)
The other XRISM instrument, called Xtend, developed by JAXA and Japanese universities, is a camera that captures X-ray images that will perform simultaneous observations with Resolve, providing complementary information. Both instruments are based on two sets of X-ray mirrors developed at the Goddard Space Flight Center.
The ESA (European Space Agency) also participates in the XRISM mission. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
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