The Astronomical Roentgen Telescope X-ray Concentrator (ART-XC) is an

X-ray telescope An X-ray telescope (XRT) is a telescope that is designed to observe remote objects in the X-ray spectrum. In order to get above the Earth's atmosphere, which is opaque to X-rays, X-ray telescopes must be mounted on high altitude rockets, balloo ...

with a

grazing incidence The angle of incidence, in geometric optics, is the angle between a ray incident on a surface and the line perpendicular (at 90 degree angle) to the surface at the point of incidence, called the normal. The ray can be formed by any waves, such as ...

mirror that is capable of capturing high energy X-ray photons within the 5-30 keV energy range. This telescope is one of the two X-ray telescopes on the

Spektr-RG Spektr-RG (Russian: Спектр-РГ, ''Spectrum'' + '' Röntgen'' + '' Gamma''; also called Spectrum-X-Gamma, SRG, SXG) is a Russian–German high-energy astrophysics space observatory which was launched on 13 July 2019. It follows on from th ...

(SRG) mission. The other telescope that SRG carries is eROSITA. The observatory was launched on 13 July 2019 via a Proton rocket from the Russian launch site Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Overview

ART-XC was developed by the Space Research Institute (IKI) and the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute for Experimental Physics (VNIIEF). The

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedi ...

Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has developed and fabricated flight models of the X-ray mirror systems. The ART-XC telescope consists of 7 identical mirror modules each made with 28 nickel-cobalt grazing-incidence mirrors. The mirror design is Wolter-I and is coated with iridium. Each module also has its own cadmium-tellurium double-sided strip detector. The typical on-axis half-power diameter of ART-XC is 27 to 34 arcsec, while the effective area of each module is 65 cm² (both were estimated at 8 keV). The field of view for each module is about 36′ in diameter. ART-XC will survey the entire sky every six months, and the planned all-sky survey will be completed in the first four years of the mission.

First light

Roscosmos published the first light image of ART-XC, which was taken on July 30, 2019. The image shows the source

Centaurus X-3 Centaurus X-3 (4U 1118-60) is an X-ray pulsar with a period of 4.84 seconds. It was the first X-ray pulsar to be discovered, and the third X-ray source to be discovered in the constellation Centaurus. The system consists of a neutron sta ...

imaged with the 7 telescopes, as well as the

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular frequ ...

of the

pulsar A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward E ...

folded at its pulse period of 4.8s.

Instruments

References

X-ray telescopes {{observatory-stub