Extragalactic Surveys with NuSTAR
Abstract
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), scheduled for launch in 2011, will open the high energy X-ray sky for sensitive study for the first time. Soft X-ray telescopes like Chandra and XMM-Newton have peered deep into the X-ray universe at low energies and have resolved much of the X-ray background below a few keV. However, extrapolating such work to higher energies indicates that a significant population of heavily-obscured AGN remain undetected in the soft X-rays, but should be detectable in the hard X-ray band. By focusing X-rays at higher energy, up to 75 keV, NuSTAR will study the X-ray background at its 30 keV peak. The NuSTAR mission baselines two nested extragalactic surveys, a shallow wide-area survey of the Bootes field covering several square degrees and a very deep, pencil-beam survey of the GOODS fields. The former corresponds to the widest area survey yet conducted by Chandra, the 9 square degree XBootes survey. The latter correspond to the deepest, Ms surveys obtained by Chandra.
- Publication:
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AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #10
- Pub Date:
- March 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008HEAD...10.4002S