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A Brief History of High-Energy (X-ray & Gamma-Ray) Astronomy
We list here (in reverse chronological order, notice) many important
events in the history of astronomy, particularly
high-energy astronomy (X-ray astronomy, gamma-ray astronomy and cosmic-ray
astronomy), with particular emphasis on events concerning
space-based observatories with X-ray and gamma-ray detectors on board
which observed cosmic (i.e., non-solar) sources. (Some of the major events
in planetary exploration missions are listed, but for a comprehensive
chronology, see
the NSSDC Chronology of Lunar and Planetary Exploration).
Also available:
A graphical version of the dates
of operation of high-energy astrophysics missions,
some common
questions (and their answers!) about high-energy astronomy,
a detailed time-line of many key events in the history of gamma-ray
astronomy, and
a
review paper on X-ray astronomy missions up to the early 1990s.
For more detailed information on NASA's possible future
astrophysics and physics missions, see
the Beyond Einstein: From the Big
Bang to Black Holes website.
For more on the history of NASA, see the
NASA History Office website.
Index by Year Range
2015 and beyond
| |
|---|
| 2020's |
Possible launch date for the
MicroArcsecond X-ray Imaging Mission
(MAXIM) mission. MAXIM is a proposed mission concept for the Black Hole
Imager part of NASA's Beyond Einstein program. The goal of MAXIM is to provide
imaging of celestial X-ray sources with a spatial resolution of 1 μas
(micro-arcsecond) or better (a million times sharper
than that achieved by the Chandra X-ray Observatory) by the technique of
space-based X-ray interferometry. This resolution would mean, for example,
that MAXIM could image the X-ray source associated with the central black hole
at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, Sagittarius A*. How sharp is
1 μas? At a distance of 1 parsec (which is roughly how far it is to the
nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri), it would correspond to a length of
only about 100 miles!
|
| 2019 |
Projected launch of the proposed joint NASA/ESA
Laser Interferometer Space Antenna
(LISA) mission. The mission is a `Great
Observatory' in NASA's Beyond Einstein
program, and an approved
ESA Cornerstone Mission. LISA will consist of three spacecraft flying 5 million
kilometers (km) apart in the shape of an equilateral triangle. The
center of the triangle formation will be in the ecliptic plane 1 AU
(150 million km) from the Sun and 20 degrees behind the Earth. The main
objective of the LISA mission is to observe gravitational waves from
galactic and extra-galactic binary systems, including gravitational
waves generated in the vicinity of the very massive black holes found
in the centers of many galaxies. Gravitational waves are one of the
fundamental building blocks of our theoretical picture of the universe.
Although there is strong indirect evidence for the existence of
gravitational waves, they have not yet been directly detected.
The three LISA spacecraft flying in formation will act as a giant Michelson
interferometer, measuring the distortion of space caused by passing
gravitational waves. Each spacecraft will contain two free-floating 'proof
masses'. The proof masses will define optical paths 5 million km long,
with a 60 degree angle between them. Lasers in each spacecraft will
be used to measure changes in the optical path lengths with a precision of
20 picometers (1 pm = 1 trillionth of a meter). |
| 2015 |
Possible launch of the
Energetic X-ray Imaging Survey Telescope (EXIST). EXIST is a proposed
mission concept, which could be launched as a free flyer, for the Black Hole
Finder Probe part of NASA's Beyond Einstein program.
EXIST would image the entire
sky each 95 min orbit, detecting extremely faint high-energy X-ray sources
in an energy range that is relatively poorly explored, yet has great potential
to yield a wealth of information. EXIST would conduct the first all-sky survey
for obscured active galactic nuclei, which likely dominate the accretion power
of the universe. The unparalled sensitivity, resolution, and energy bandwidth
coverage of EXIST would make it the `Next Generation Gamma-Ray Burst
Observatory'. EXIST science would cover many additional key topics, from the
origin and evolution of black holes to helping to constrain the origin of the
diffuse IR background. |
| Mid 2010s |
Possible launch of the
MicroArcsecond X-ray
Imaging Mission (MAXIM) Pathfinder mission. The goals of MAXIM
Pathfinder would be to demonstrate the feasibility in space of X-ray
interferometry for astronomical applications, and to provide imaging of
celestial X-ray sources with a spatial resolution of 100 micro-arcseconds
(μas) which is 5000 times better than that achieved by the Chandra X-ray
Observatory. How sharp is 100 μas? At a distance of 1 parsec (which is
roughly how far it is to the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri), it
would correspond to a length of about 10,000 miles, or roughly the diameter
of the Earth! |
2010-2014
| |
|---|
| Mid 2010s |
Possible launch of the
Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), part of NASA's Beyond Einstein program.
JDEM is an Einstein probe that will focus on investigating dark energy.
JDEM is a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy.
In August 2006 NASA initiated the study of three mission concepts for
JDEM: the Advanced Dark Energy Physics Telescope (ADEPT), the
SuperNova/Acceleration Probe-Lensing (SNAP-L), and the Dark Energy Space
Telescope (Destiny). The JDEM mission that actually flies will be determined
by a future, open competition.
Each group plans to measure how the universe's expansion rate has changed over
time by studying Type Ia supernovae: the explosive deaths of white dwarfs.
Type Ia supernovae are relatively uniform in their luminosities and other
properties, and they are extremely luminous. So they are ideal "standard
candles" for measuring distances to remote galaxies. By observing many Type
Ia events in their host galaxies, both near and far, scientists can determine
how fast galaxies are moving away from us, and this in turn yields crucial
information about how fast our universe was expanding at different epochs.
In fact, this is how two independent teams of astronomers discovered dark
energy in 1998. Yet each proposed mission incorporates at least one additional
measurement technique as well, unique to that spacecraft. The combination of
multiple techniques provides independent and complementary checks on the
history of cosmic expansion. These additional methods all delve into the
infrared regime, and for good reason: the most distant stars and galaxies
glow primarily in infrared. The expanding universe has literally stretched (or
redshifted) their visible light into the infrared portion of the
electromagnetic spectrum. |
| 2014 |
Possible launch of the
Simbol-X mission. This international mission is being developed
by the French and Italian Space Agencies, CNES and ASI. It will observe
in a broad X-ray band from 0.5 to 80 keV and its long focal-length optics
requires that the detector be on a separate spacecraft which will fly
in formation with the telescope spacecraft (the latter concept is currently
also proposed for the much larger XEUS mission described above).
Simbol-X will be the first operational mission to use Formation Flying and
will open new windows on the Universe for the scientific community. It will
offer enhanced sensitivity and unmatched resolution for studying the
interactions between black holes and their environment, or the acceleration
of particles in the heart of pulsars and galaxy clusters. |
| 2013 |
Projected launch of the Astro-H mission,
formerly known as New X-Ray
Telescope (NeXT). Astro-H is is a next-generation X-ray astronomy
satellite that the Japanese space agency (JAXA) is planning, with NASA
participation. It will be dedicated to the exploration of non-thermal
phenomena in the Universe through its hard X-ray imaging, high-resolution
spectroscopy, and broad-band coverage. The objectives are the non-thermal
X-ray components in cluster of galaxies and SNR, hidden AGN and their
contribution to the cosmic X-ray background. Such non-thermal energy
comprises a considerable fraction of the total energy in the Universe.
The US will provide a High-Resolution Soft X-Ray Spectrometer
(SXS) for NEXT. The SXS will probe matter in extreme environments; investigate
the nature of dark matter on large scales in the universe; and explore how
galaxies and clusters of galaxies form and evolve. Other instruments on NeXT
will include a focussing hard X-ray telescope and a soft gamma-ray detector.
|
| 2013 |
Projected launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
This NASA/ESA/Canadian Space Agency mission comprises a large infrared telescope
with a 6.5 meter primary mirror, and will find and study the first generation
of galaxies that formed in the early Universe, stars forming planetary systems,
among many other research topics. JWST's instruments will observe at
wavelengths from the optical (0.6 microns) to the mid-infrared (29 microns).
JWST will, like WMAP, be placed in an orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange
point L2 which is located 1.5 million km from the Earth in the anti-Sun
direction. |
| Late 2011 |
Projected launch of the Russian Space Agency's Spectrum X Gamma
(Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma, or SRG) orbiting observatory. This totally
reconfigured mission's present nominal science payload includes the following
X-ray instruments:
- extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array (e-ROSITA): Germany
- Astronomical Roentgen Telescope X-ray Concentrator (ART-XC): Russia
- SRG X-ray Calorimeter (SXC): Netherlands, Japan, US, Germany
The US contribution to the mission consists of the flight-spare
microcalorimeter array developed for Suzaku (Astro-E2) and is funded through
NASA's Astronomy and Physics Research & Analysis (APRA) program.
eROSITA will perform an all-sky
medium-energy X-ray survey with a hundred times more sensitivity and a hundred
times better angular resolution than the best previous 2-10 keV survey
(performed by the A-2 instrument on HEA0-1 in the late 1970's).
The main scientific goals are:
* To detect systematically all obscured accreting Black Holes in nearby
galaxies, as well as many (> 170000) new, distant active galactic nuclei
* To detect the hot intergalactic medium of 50-100 thousand galaxy clusters
and groups and hot gas in filaments between clusters, so as to map out the
large-scale structure in the Universe for the study of cosmic structure
evolution, and
* To study in detail the physics of galactic X-ray source populations, like
pre-main sequence stars, supernova remnants and X-ray binaries.
|
| 2011 August |
Projected launch of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope
Array (NuSTAR) mission. NuSTAR is is a pathfinder mission that will
open the high-energy X-ray sky for sensitive study for the first time. X-ray
telescopes like Chandra and XMM-Newton have peered deep into the X-ray universe
at low X-ray energy (X-ray energies less than 10 keV). By focusing X-rays at
higher energies (up to 80 keV), NuSTAR will answer fundamental questions about
the Universe:
How are black holes distributed through the cosmos?
How were the elements that compose our bodies and the Earth forged in the
explosions of massive stars?
What powers the most extreme active galaxies? |
| 2011 March 18 |
Insertion into orbit around Mercury of NASA's
MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space
Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft. In order
to become the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury, MESSENGER followed a
tortuous path through the inner solar system, including one flyby of Earth,
two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury itself. MESSENGER's science
goals during the year-long orbital phase of its mission are to provide
the first images of the entire planet and to collect detailed
information on the composition and structure of Mercury's crust, its geologic
history, the nature of its thin atmosphere and active magnetosphere, and the
makeup of its core and polar materials.
|
| 2011 |
Projected launch of
MIRAX, an X-ray astronomy satellite mission
which forms part of the Brazilian Space Agency Scientific Satellite Program.
MIRAX (Monitor e Imageador de
Raios X) is an approved X-ray astronomy monitoring and imaging mission and
includes a very strong international partnership with the USA,
Netherlands and Germany. Its main scientific subjects will be transient X-ray
sources in general, black hole and neutron star systems, X-ray bursts,
superbursts, burst oscillations, hard X-ray emission from accreting neutron
star systems, the appearance and evolution of accreting spectral states in
black holes, microquasars, and fast X-ray novae. MIRAX will be capable
of making a very significant contribution to the field of X-ray variability
by virtue of its unprecedented strategy of prolonged, continuous monitoring
of a large sample of sources. |
| 2010 |
Projected launch of the Chinese National Space Administration
(CNSA) Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope
(HXMT) satellite. This mission
will perform the most sensitive all-sky survey to date in the hard X-ray
(20 - 200 keV) energy band. It will also have soft and medium X-ray
(1 - 30 keV) detectors for pointed observations of such objects as X-ray
binary systems containing black holes or neutron stars, AGN, SNRs, SGRs
and clusters of galaxies. |
2005-2009
| |
|---|
| Late 2009 |
Projected launch of the European Space Agency's LISA
Pathfinder
mission, formerly known as SMART-2 (Small Missions
for Advanced Research in Technology: Second Mission).
LISA Pathfinder will
consist of two satellites flying several hundred metres apart. LISA Pathfinder
will pave the way for a major ESA/NASA mission
planned for the near future: LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna),
aimed at detecting gravitational waves generated by very massive objects
such as black holes. Detecting gravitational waves will tell us more about
the way space and time are interconnected.
The mission consists of placing two test-masses in a nearly perfect
gravitational free-fall, and of controlling and measuring their motion
with unprecedented accuracy. (LISA Pathfinder will check, among other things,
sensors that can tell
whether a 100 kilogram spacecraft has moved from its position by just 10
millionths of a millimeter). This is achieved through state-of-the-art
technology comprising inertial sensors, a laser metrology system,
a drag-free control system and an ultra-precise micro-propulsion
system. All these technologies are essential not only for LISA;
they also lie at the heart of any future space-based test of
Einstein's General Relativity. |
| 2009 |
400th anniversary of Galileo's first telescopic observations. This will
be celebrated as the International Year
of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009), "a global celebration of astronomy and
its contributions to society and culture", to be coordinated by the
International Astronomical Union (IAU).
|
| 2009 May |
Scheduled launch of space shuttle Endeavour on the STS-127 mission,
which will carry (inter alia) the JAXA
Monitor of All-Sky X-ray Image (MAXI) experiment for installation
on the International Space Station (ISS). MAXI is an all-sky X-ray scanner,
consists of X-ray slit cameras with high sensitivity, which will continuously
monitor X-ray-emitting astronomical objects over a broad energy band
(0.5 to 30 keV), i.e., it is an X-ray all-sky monitor. |
| 2009 April |
Projected launch of
ASTROSAT, India's first multiwavelength astronomy satellite.
Most astronomical objects in the known Universe emit radiation
spanning the complete electromagnetic spectrum stretching from long wavelength
radio emission to extremely short wavelength gamma rays. Hence for a detailed
understanding of the physical processes that give rise to frequency-dependent,
time-variable phenomena, it is essential to carrry out nearly simultaneous
multi-frequency observations. Important areas requiring broad band
coverage include studies of astrophysical objects ranging from the nearby
solar system objects to distant stars, to objects at cosmological distances;
timing studies of variables ranging from pulsations of the hot white dwarfs to
active galactic nuclei (AGN) with time scales ranging from milliseconds to few
hours to days. ASTROSAT is a multiwavelength astronomy mission with 5
instruments
onboard to cover the UV(1000-3000 A), soft and hard x-ray regimes (0.3-8 keV;
2-100 keV). Science Objectives of ASTROSAT include:
* Multiwavelength studies of cosmic sources
* Monitoring the X-ray sky for new transients
* All-sky survey in the hard X-ray and UV bands
* Broadband spectroscopic studies of X-ray binaries, AGN, SNRs,
clusters of galaxies and stellar coronae
* Studies of periodic and non-periodic variability of X-ray sources
* Monitoring intensity of known sources and detecting outbursts and luminosity
variations
|
| 2008 October 10 at 12:43 am EDT |
Projected launch of the Space
Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-125
mission to repair and expand the capabilities
of the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST).
This is the fifth and final servicing mission to HST and should enable it to
continue operations through 2013, and potentially even longer. |
| 2008 October 1 |
50th anniversary of the start of operations of
NASA, the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, in 5 facilities inherited from the National
Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) agency which it subsumed, together
with space projects and appropriations from other space programs. These gave
NASA 8,240 staff (8,000 from the NACA) and a budget of approximately $340
million. |
| 2008 July 29 |
50th anniversary of the signing into law of the act establishing
NASA, the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, the civilian space agency of the United
States of America, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. |
| 2008 June 11 at 12:05 pm EDT |
Successful launch on a Delta II Heavy rocket of the
Fermi Gamma-Ray Space
Telescope, formerly known as
Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), a NASA/DOE mission
with international partners. Fermi is the next generation high-energy
gamma-ray observatory designed for making
observations of celestial gamma-ray sources in the energy band
extending from 10 MeV to more than 100 GeV. It follows in the footsteps
of the CGRO-EGRET experiment, which was operational between 1991-1999.
The key scientific objectives of the Fermi mission are:
1. To understand the mechanisms of particle acceleration in AGNs,
pulsars, and SNRs.
2. To resolve the gamma-ray sky: unidentified sources and diffuse
emission.
3. To determine the high-energy behavior of gamma-ray bursts and
transients.
4. To probe dark matter and the early Universe. |
| 2008 May 25 |
Successful soft-landing on the northern plains of Mars of NASA's
Phoenix Mars Mission. Once it is fully activated, Phoenix will
literally dig into the soil and the subsurface water-ice and perform chemical
analyses designed to help scientists better understand the past and present
habitability of this unique environment for (hypothetical) Martian
microbes. |
| 2008 April 25, 05:12-08:00 UT |
The
Swift satellite detects an unusually intense X-ray `superflare'
from the single nearby M dwarf star EV Lacertae. Analysis confirms that this
is the brightest stellar flare ever detected in the X-ray band, e.g.,
the peak X-ray flux is 3 x 10-8 erg s-1 cm-2
in the 0.3-10.0 keV band. This flare was bright enough in the hard X-ray
range that it was also detected in the 20-70 keV energy band by the
Konus S2 gamma-ray burst detector on NASA's
Wind satellite. At its peak, this flare was brighter than
the star's entire bolometric luminosity (see
Osten et al. 2008, ATel, No. 1499 for more details). |
| 2008 March 19 |
NASA's
Swift satellite observes the
brightest gamma-ray burst optical afterglow yet detected. This
GRB's afterglow was bright enough to have been seen with the naked eye,
reaching a maximum brightness between 5th and 6th magnitude. Spectra indicate
that this object has a cosmological redshift of 0.94, meaning that it is 7.5
billion light years away, and that the explosion actually happened 7.5 billion
years ago, i.e, 3 billion years before the Sun and solar system formed. |
| 2008 March 19 |
Death of Arthur C.
Clarke (1917 - 2008), noted science fiction writer and futurologist,
who inspired many people all over the world with his prescient and elegant
visions of humanity's and the universe's past, present and future, and the
roles and limitations of technology:
"Open the pod bay doors,
HAL"... |
| 2007 August 30 |
NASA's Voyager 2
spacecraft, launched in 1977, crosses
the solar wind termination shock (multiple times) and enters the heliosheath
region, the transition region between the region dominated by the
solar wind (the "heliosphere") and the true interstellar medium. |
| 2007 August 4 |
Successful launch on a Delta II rocket of NASA's
Phoenix Mars Mission, a spacecraft that will soft land on the
northern plains of Mars on May 25th 2008. Once safely landed, Phoenix will
literally dig into the soil and subsurface water-ice and perform chemical
analyses designed to help scientists better understand the past and present
habitability of this unique environment for hypothetical Martian microbes. |
| 2007 April 26 |
First low-altitude (up to 10,500 feet) test flight of the
Stratospheric Observatory for
Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a joint project of NASA and DLR (the
German Aerospace Center). Normal operations for this Boeing 747SP-based
telescope will be conducted at altitudes above 40,000 feet where the sky
is much more transparent to IR radiation than at lower altitudes. The first
flight on which general astronomical observations will be made is currently
expected to be in 2010. |
| 2007 April 23 |
Successful launch on an Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)
PSLV rocket of the
Agile (Astro-rivelatore Gamma a Immagini LEggero, or Light
Astro Gamma Imaging Detector) payload. AGILE is an Italian Space
Agency gamma-ray mission conceived as a bridge between the EGRET
gamma-ray detector on the
Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (CGRO) and
the GLAST mission.
The AGILE telescope (30 MeV - 50 GeV) will
measure the electron and positron resulting from the gamma-ray pair
conversion process, together with a calorimeter that will determine the
energy. An anti-coincidence detector will separate the gamma rays from
the background of cosmic ray charged particles found in space.
Smaller than EGRET, improved technology gives AGILE comparable on-axis
sensitivity, a much wider field of view (about 3 sr, or one-fourth of the sky),
better angular resolution (5 - 20 arcminutes for strong sources) and a much
smaller deadtime (less than 1 millisecond). This
combination of features will allow AGILE to expand on the EGRET discoveries
significantly and set the scientific groundwork for the much larger NASA GLAST
mission. AGILE should be ideal for detecting AGN flaring
activity, gamma-ray bursts, pulsars, new transients, solar flares, and
cosmic-ray interactions in the Galaxy. |
| 2007 February 28, 05:44 UT |
Closest approach to Jupiter of NASA's New Horizons
spacecraft. New Horizons received a velocity boost due to Jupiter's gravity to
help speed it on its way to Pluto, which it is scheduled to encounter in July
2015. |
| 2006 August 13, 21:13 UT |
NASA's Voyager 1
spacecraft, launched in 1977, becomes the most
distant human artifact in space, reaching a distance of 100 Astronomical
units (15 billion km) from the Sun, on its way to and beyond the edge
of the solar system or heliopause. |
| 2006 January 19, 19:00 UT |
The successful launch of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on
its 9.5 year flight to Pluto and its moon Charon via Jupiter (from which it
will get a velocity boost using the gravity assist from a close approach).
New Horizons is the first spacecraft dedicated to the exploration of the
Pluto-Charon system, and it may go on to explore even more distant Kuiper
Belt Objects after its Pluto fly-by in 2015.
|
| 2005 December 16 |
The
Swift satellite detects an unusually intense X-ray `superflare'
from the binary system II Pegasi. Analysis confirms that this is one of the
brightest stellar flares ever detected in the X-ray band, e.g., 100,000
times more X-ray luminous than the most intense solar flare yet seen, and the
detection of X-rays up to an energy of 200 keV strongly favors a non-thermal
model for the hard X-rays (see Osten et al. 2007, ApJ, 654, 1052). |
| 2005 September 29 |
The end of the data collection phase for the Gravity Probe-B (GP-B)
spacecraft,
when the helium in its dewar was finally exhausted. This experiment had four
incredibly precise, supercooled gyroscopes which tested two predictions of
Einstein's theory of general relativity, namely the existence
and the magnitude of the
gravitomagnetic (`frame-dragging' of space-time by the rotating earth
in this case) and the geodetic (the space-time curvature caused by the
gravitational field of the earth) effects that are predicted by
this theory. This mission is now in the data analysis phase, currently expected
to continue until September 2008, although preliminary reports are that GP-B
has already confirmed the presence of the geodetic effect (170 times larger
than the frame-dragging effect) to a precision of better than 1%. |
| 2005 September 4 |
The
Swift satellite detects an unusually long (200 seconds) gamma-ray
burst (GRB 050904), which optical follow-up observations confirm is the
most distant GRB ever detected, with a redshift of 6.29 which
translates to a distance of 13.7 billion light years. Only one other object,
a quasar with a redshift of 6.4, had been discovered at a greater
redshift/distance than this GRB as of this date. |
| 2005 July 9 |
Successful launch of the
Suzaku (formerly called ASTRO-E2) X-Ray Observatory,
a replacement of the ASTRO-E mission which suffered a launch failure on
February 10 2000. Suzaku is Japan's fifth X-ray astronomy mission, and
was developed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Institute
of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in
collaboration with U.S. (NASA/GSFC, MIT) and other Japanese institutions.
Suzaku covers the high-energy range from 0.4 - 700 keV with
three instruments, an X-ray micro-calorimeter (X-ray Spectrometer; XRS,
unfortunately inoperational after 1 month), four X-ray
CCDs (X-ray Imaging Spectrometer; XIS), and the Hard X-ray Detector (HXD).
Suzaku uses the Universe as a
laboratory for unraveling complex, high-energy processes and
the behavior of matter under extreme conditions. Scientific issues that
will be addressed during its mission include
the fate of matter as it spirals into black holes, the nature
of supermassive black holes found at the center of quasars,
the 100 million degree gas that is flowing into giant clusters
of galaxies, and the nature of supernova explosions that
create the heavier elements, which ultimately form planets. |
| 2005 July 4, 1:52 am EDT |
Impact of
NASA's Deep Impact impactor spacecraft with Comet Tempel 1
at a relative velocity of 10 km/s (23,000 mph), generating an intense flash
of light, and starting a prolonged outburst of comet material. This event
and its aftermath were observed by the nearby Deep Impact mothership, as
well as a host of other ground- and space-based telescopes and observatories,
including the Chandra, RXTE, and XMM-Newton X-ray observatories,
and the Swift
multi-wavelength suite of detectors. Analysis of all these datasets
should yield unique and valuable information about the space environment,
interior composition and structure of this comet. Early results indicate that
Tempel 1 was detected as an X-ray source by XMM-Newton and Chandra. The
observed X-rays are likely the
result of charge exchange between cool neutral material in the comet's coma
and highly charged solar wind ions. |
| 2005 |
This year was designated the World Year of Physics:
Einstein in the 21st Century by the International Union of Pure and
Applied Physics as a celebration of the centenary of Albert Einstein's
`miraculous year' of 1905 in which he published 3 of his most influential
papers. |
| 2005 May 9, 5:03:23 UT |
First accurate localization of a short gamma-ray burst, GRB 050509b,
by instruments on NASA's Swift
Gamma-Ray Burst Mission. This GRB lasted
only 40 milliseconds, and was followed by a 5-minutes X-ray afterglow that
was studied by Swift's X-Ray telescope. No associated optical afterglow was
detected, either by Swift's Ultraviolet and Optical Telescope or by
ground-based telescopes, but the
location of this GRB on the outskirts of a 2.6 billion light years-distant
elliptical galaxy suggests that it (and presumably other short GRBs) is
the birth `scream' of a black hole as it forms from the merger of two neutron
stars (or of two pre-existing black holes, or of a neutron star with
a pre-existing black hole) in a close binary system. See Gehrels et al.
(2005, astro-ph/0505630) for more details. |
Index by Year Range
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following individuals for their
contributions to this page:
Jesse S. Allen, and
Ian M. George
along with
JPL's Space Calendar and the
Working Group for the History of Astronomy's
Astronomiae Historia (History of Astronomy) information pages.
All dates/times are east-coast time for the U.S.A., unless otherwise stated.
NET means 'no earlier than'. Please send information concerning
dates/deadlines not currently included on this page and/or corrections to:
Stephen.A.Drake @ nasa.gov
Web page author: Stephen A. Drake (based on an original by Jesse S. Allen)
Web page maintainer: Stephen A. Drake
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