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Scientific Landscape in the 2030s | |||
Wednesday | Chairs: Neil Gehrels, Steven Kahn | ||
14:00 - 14:30 | Steven Kahn |
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) | |
14:30 - 15:00 | Xavier Barcons Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC) |
Athena: the X-ray observatory to study the hot and energetic Universe | |
15:00 - 15:30 | Kevin Meagher Georgia Institute of Technology, for the CTA Consortium |
The Cherenkov Telescope Array | |
15:30 - 16:00 | Neil Gehrels NASA-GSFC |
WFIRST Mission and Relation to LISA |
To be submitted
Hot gas pervades the Universe: about half of the baryonic content in the Universe is expected to be at T > 10^5 K, and there are as many baryons at T > 10^7 trapped in galaxy clusters as there are locked into stars. There is an intimate relation between this hot gas, which delineates the large-scale structure of the Universe, and the most energetic phenomena occurring in the immediate vicinity of super massive black holes, through a poorly known process called Cosmic Feedback. Studying The Hot and Energetic Universe requires X-ray observatories in space, whose capabilities greatly exceed those of the current workhorse observatories: NASA's Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton. ESA's L2 mission due for launch in 2028 will be a large X-ray observatory capable of addressing the above topics, and many more fundamental questions in contemporary astrophysics. Athena (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics) is the mission being put forward to meet these objectives. In this presentation, I will describe the Athena science objectives, the mission concept and its payload, including the X-ray telescope and its two baseline instruments: a Wide Field Imager (WFI) and an X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU).
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next major ground-based
observatory for gamma-ray astronomy. CTA will utilize imaging
atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) to study gamma-ray sources in
the energy range of a few tens of GeV to 100 TeV. CTA will improve
observations of very-high-energy gamma rays with ten times better
sensitivity than available from currently operating instruments
(VERITAS, H.E.S.S., and MAGIC). Coverage of the entire sky will be
achieved by constructing CTA as two telescope arrays, one in the
southern hemisphere and a second in the northern hemisphere. For IACTs a
larger size telescope is most efficient at low energies while a smaller
size telescope is more cost effective at higher energies; to obtain uniform
energy coverage, CTA is envisioned as an array comprising several
different sizes of telescopes. At the center of each array will be
four 23m large-size telescopes (LST). The LSTs will be surrounded by an
array of medium-sized telescopes (MST) which will include both a
conventional, single-mirror 12m telescope design and a novel, two-mirror
9.5m Schwarzschild-Couder design. To view gamma rays in excess of 100
TeV, observable from galactic sources, the southern site will include an
array of small-sized telescopes (SST) spread out to cover a larger area
than the MSTs. CTA will address a number of open questions in
astrophysics and fundamental physics. In this talk, I will review the
expected performance of CTA instrument as well as the main scientific
goals for the observatory.
Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), the top-priority mission in the 2010 Astronomy & Astrophysics Decadal Survey, is now planned to use an already-built 2.4m telescope obtained from the National Reconnaissance Organization. This telescope provides image clarity similar to HST, but with an optical design and array of new-generation H4RG infrared detectors that enables imaging of 100 times the area of HST in a single exposure. This wide-field IR instrument will provide galaxy surveys and supernova monitoring for dark energy studies that are significantly deeper than those planned by other observatories. A coronagraph instrument will directly image ice and gas giant planets, and circumstellar disks. The talk will summarize the mission and its capabilities for joint observations with LISA.