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. X-rays are absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere, so instruments to detect X-rays must be taken to high altitude by balloons, sounding rockets ...

with a grazing incidence 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 t ...

(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 agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

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 Wolter is a given name and surname of Low German and Low Franconian origin. It is equivalent to the English Walter, High German Walther, Dutch Wouter and French Gauthier. People with the name Wolter include: Given name * Wolter von Plettenberg (c ...

-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 imaged with the 7 telescopes, as well as the

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph (discrete mathematics), graph of the Radiance, light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude (astronomy), magnitude of light received on the ''y''-axis ...

of the

pulsar A pulsar (''pulsating star, on the model of quasar'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its Poles of astronomical bodies#Magnetic poles, magnetic poles. This radiation can be obse ...

folded at its pulse period of 4.8s.

Instruments

References

X-ray telescopes {{observatory-stub