Telescope to focus on black holes
Print Edition
CHINA launched its first X-ray space telescope via a Long March-4B rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Gobi Desert at 11am yesterday.
The 2.5-ton Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), dubbed Insight, was sent into an orbit of 550 kilometers above the Earth to help scientists better understand the evolution of black holes, and the strong magnetic fields and the interiors of pulsars.
Scientists will also study how to use pulsars for spacecraft navigation, and search for gamma-ray bursts corresponding to gravitational waves.
Insight is expected to push forward the development of space astronomy and improve space X-ray detection technology in China.
It acts as a small observatory in space, carrying a trio of detectors — the high-energy X-ray telescope (HE), the medium-energy X-ray telescope (ME) and the low-energy X-ray telescope (LE), said Lu Fangjun, chief designer of the payload.
The HE has a total detection area of more than 5,000 square centimeters, the world’s largest in its energy band.
“Given it has a larger detection area than other X-ray probes, HXMT can identify more features of known sources,” said Xiong Shaolin, a scientist at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Chen Yong, chief designer of the LE, said X-rays of lower energy usually have more photons, so a telescope based on a focusing technique is not suitable for observing very bright objects emitting soft X-rays, as too many photons at a time will result in over-exposure.
But HXMT won’t have that problem, as it diffuses photons instead of focusing them. “No matter how bright the sources are, our telescope won’t be blinded,” said Chen.
Zhang Shuangnan, HXMT lead scientist, said: “We are looking forward to discovering new activities of black holes and studying the state of neutron stars under extreme gravity and density conditions, and physical laws under extreme magnetic fields.”
Compared with other countries’ X-ray astronomical satellites, HXMT has a larger detection area, broader energy range and wider field of view. These give it advantages in observing black holes and neutron stars emitting bright X-rays, and it can more efficiently scan the galaxy, Zhang said.
Other satellites have conducted sky surveys and found many celestial sources of X-rays. However, the sources are often variable, and occasional intense flares can be missed in just one or two surveys, Zhang said.
New surveys can discover either new X-ray sources or new activities in known sources. So HXMT will repeatedly scan the Milky Way for active and variable celestial bodies emitting X-rays.
“There are so many black holes and neutron stars in the universe, but we don’t have a thorough understanding of any of them. So we need new satellites to observe more,” Zhang said.
“We hope our telescope can discover more black holes. We also hope to better observe the black holes already discovered.”
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