Telescope look into a black hole – BBC

On February 17, 17 hours and 45 minutes of local time (11 hours 45 minutes Moscow time) from Tanegashima Space Center started most probably ambitious Japanese space mission –

X-ray space telescope ASTRO-H, which allows the equipment to observe extreme energy events in the universe with the highest resolution, unprecedented sensitivity and unusually wide frequency range – from the soft X-rays to soft range.

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The original telescope launch scheduled for 12 February, but due to adverse weather conditions it had to be postponed to a later time.

The entire flight, from start-up procedure and finishing department “payload” from the carrier rocket, was broadcast on-line thanks to the equipment installed on aboard the carrier rocket H-IIA. This “X-ray eyes” of Japan weighing 2.7 tonnes and up to 14 m will study the universe, while in a circular orbit, making a revolution around the Earth in 96 minutes

«ASTRO-H -. This orbital X-ray Observatory , developed by the Japanese space agency JAXA with NASA in one of the tools. Full energy range covered by different tools, – from 0.3 to 300 keV. But the main feature is a Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS), which serves as a detector called microcalorimeter – a device that allows you to determine the energy of the X-ray photons with unparalleled accuracy in 7 eV (in the range from 0.3 to 10 keV) that is comparable to with a spectral resolution of certain optical spectrographs low resolution – said “Gazeta.ru” Dmitry Klotchkov, a specialist in the field of X-ray astronomy, the Institute of astronomy and astrophysics, University of Tübingen (Germany)

– with the help of this tool are planning to study the turbulent motion of the gas in clusters of galaxies, and the accretion flow near black holes for the purpose of “probing” the characteristics of space-time near the event horizon

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The scientific objectives also include the study of astrophysical jets and shock waves. The interesting thing is that this is not the first attempt to launch micro calorimeter. This detector was on the Suzaku observatory (also as a result of a very successful off last year), but there he broke down immediately after the start. With this microcalorimetry bind a lot

hope. “According to the Journal of Nature, it is not the second, and a third attempt to win the X-ray part of the world. The first publisher of the prestigious journal is considered an unsuccessful launch telescope ASTRO-E, which took place in 2000.

Then the rocket fell apart in the air shortly after the launch.

The failure, which occurred with Suzaku in July 2005, was caused by the leakage of helium cooling spectrometer, which eventually after day caused the destruction of all the helium tank and led spectrometer into disrepair before it began to make observations.

at this time, say the representatives of collaboration ASTRO-H, all the possible troubles were taken into account, the very equipment has undergone a significant upgrade in part due to the leading position of Japan in the development of cryogenic technology and nanotechnology, in part because of public policy space agency, to open wide the doors for international cooperation.

As a result, in addition to NASA in preparing the mission, brought together more than 70 research centers in the US, Canada and Europe, including the European space agency. It is assumed that said microcalorimeter successfully cooled to liquid helium temperatures and produce observation for at least three years. All this, taken together, will help Japanese astronomers to see that in any other telescope can not be seen.