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 79 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. Additional extragalactic programs in the current baseline program include blazar monitoring and observing supernovae in the local universe.
- Publication:
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American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #213
- Pub Date:
- January 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AAS...21345204S