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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)Download
14:30 - 15:00 Xavier Barcons
Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC)
Athena: the X-ray observatory to study the hot and energetic UniverseDownload
15:00 - 15:30 Kevin Meagher
Georgia Institute of Technology, for the CTA Consortium
The Cherenkov Telescope ArrayDownload
15:30 - 16:00 Neil Gehrels
NASA-GSFC
WFIRST Mission and Relation to LISADownload
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Download
Steven Kahn -
To be submitted
Athena: the X-ray observatory to study the hot and energetic Universe Download
Xavier Barcons - Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC)
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 Download
Kevin Meagher - Georgia Institute of Technology, for the CTA Consortium
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.
WFIRST Mission and Relation to LISA Download
Neil Gehrels - NASA-GSFC
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.