The International X-ray Observatory

Journal Article · Thu Jul 15 00:00:00 EDT 2010 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3475340· OSTI ID:21410523

White, Nicholas E ^[1]; Parmar, Arvind ^[2]; Kunieda, Hideyo ^[3]; Nandra, Kirpal ^[4]; Ohashi, Takaya ^[5]; Bookbinder, Jay ^[6]

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1. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (United States)
2. ESAC-PO Box 78, E-28691 Villanueva de la Canada, Madrid (Spain)
3. X-ray Astronomy Group, Nagoya University, Nagoya (Japan)
4. Astrophysics Group, Imperial College London, London (United Kingdom)
5. Physics Department, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Tokyo (Japan)
6. Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA (United States)

The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is a joint ESA-JAXA-NASA effort to address fundamental and timely questions in astrophysics: What happens close to a black hole? How did supermassive black holes grow? How does large scale structure form? What is the connection between these processes? To address these questions IXO will employ optics with 3 sq m collecting area and 5 arc sec angular resolution--20 times more collecting area at 1 keV than any previous X-ray observatory. Focal plane instruments will deliver a 100-fold increase in effective area for high-resolution spectroscopy, deep spectral imaging over a wide field of view, unprecedented polarimetric sensitivity, microsecond spectroscopic timing, and high count rate capability. The mission is being planned for launch in 2021 to an L2 orbit, with a five-year lifetime and consumables for 10 years.

• OSTI ID: 21410523
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1248, Issue 1; Conference: International conference on X-ray astronomy 2009: Present status, multi-wavelength approach and future perspectives, Bologna (Italy), 7-11 Sep 2009; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3475340; (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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