News 2018

Nov 07, 2018

A prototype of the MXT camera arrived at the CNES in Toulouse on 25 October 2018. This is the Structural and Thermal Model (STM), which will be integrated into the telescope that will be sent to China to be mounted on the SVOM satellite Qualification Model.


The objective of this model is to validate the thermo-mechanical design of the camera. It also makes it possible to check the manufacturing and assembly capacity of the various components, which represent more than 1,000 elements. The model realized includes all the camera subassemblies with a good level of representativeness of the flight model, both on its external design (interfaces with the telescope) and on its internal design (harnesses, connectors...). The electrical parts (detector, electronic boards, motor) are replaced by weights and heaters to simulate their mechanical and thermal behaviour. 

Sep 26, 2018

X-ray photons were detected for the first time in late August 2018 with an engineering model of the SVOM MXT focal plane. This is an important step towards the validation of the design of the detection chain.
The MXT telescope, for Microchannel X-ray Telescope, will be flown on board the SVOM satellite, a collaborative project between France (CNES) and China (CAS, CNSA) to study gamma-ray bursts. It aims at detecting soft X-rays (0.2 to 10 keV) at during the early phases of the afterglow emission, and at providing an accurate (smaller than 1 arc minute) position of the burst. Irfu is in charge of the design and realization of the telescope camera, integrating a pnCCD (provided by MPE) X-ray imaging spectrometer assembled on a dedicated ceramic board. The flight model of the detector must be integrated into the camera in one year from now.



 

May 23, 2018
The European Spatial Agency retains the mission of exploration of galaxies

The SPICA infrared space telescope has been shortlisted by the European Space Agency (ESA) to participate in the final competition which will see in September 2021 the choice of the next mission of medium size ESA (M5 mission). SPICA is a large infrared telescope (diameter 2.5 m) fully cooled to a temperature of only a few degrees above absolute zero. This concept was proposed to ESA as part of the competition for the M5 mission of the "Cosmic Vision" program (25 proposals submitted) by a consortium of European research laboratories led by Holland in close collaboration with the space agency Japan (JAXA), and in which the CEA (Département d'Astrophysique of CEA-Irfu), the CNRS and their associated universities participate in France with the support of CNES.

See the French version for more : La mission SPICA en compétition pour l'ESA

 

May 10, 2018
THESEUS pre-selected for an ESA M5 mission

On May 7, 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the three selected space missions, out of the 25 proposed, for the fifth ESA middle class mission in its scientific program Cosmic Vision, whose launch date is planned in 2032. One of these three missions is the THESEUS project (Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor), a project developed in recent years by a large European consortium in which the Astrophysics Department-AIM Laboratory of CEA-Irfu plays a major role. THESEUS aims to explore the early Universe (the first billion years) through gamma ray bursts (GRBs), the most extreme explosions of the cosmos, and to provide accurate detection, localization, and distance measurement of gravitational waves and neutrinos sources, as well as many other transient celestial sources.

Nov 07, 2018

A prototype of the MXT camera arrived at the CNES in Toulouse on 25 October 2018. This is the Structural and Thermal Model (STM), which will be integrated into the telescope that will be sent to China to be mounted on the SVOM satellite Qualification Model.


The objective of this model is to validate the thermo-mechanical design of the camera. It also makes it possible to check the manufacturing and assembly capacity of the various components, which represent more than 1,000 elements. The model realized includes all the camera subassemblies with a good level of representativeness of the flight model, both on its external design (interfaces with the telescope) and on its internal design (harnesses, connectors...). The electrical parts (detector, electronic boards, motor) are replaced by weights and heaters to simulate their mechanical and thermal behaviour. 

Sep 26, 2018

X-ray photons were detected for the first time in late August 2018 with an engineering model of the SVOM MXT focal plane. This is an important step towards the validation of the design of the detection chain.
The MXT telescope, for Microchannel X-ray Telescope, will be flown on board the SVOM satellite, a collaborative project between France (CNES) and China (CAS, CNSA) to study gamma-ray bursts. It aims at detecting soft X-rays (0.2 to 10 keV) at during the early phases of the afterglow emission, and at providing an accurate (smaller than 1 arc minute) position of the burst. Irfu is in charge of the design and realization of the telescope camera, integrating a pnCCD (provided by MPE) X-ray imaging spectrometer assembled on a dedicated ceramic board. The flight model of the detector must be integrated into the camera in one year from now.



 

Oct 01, 2018
Impressing results from a large X-ray catalog of galaxy clusters

Using the ESA's XMM-Newton observatory, an international team, led by Marguerite Pierre of the Astrophysics Department of CEA-Irfu, has revealed the latest results of the XXL survey, the largest observation program X-ray produced to date by the XMM satellite. The second batch of data just published in a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, includes information on 365 galaxy clusters and 26,000 active galactic nuclei (AGN). By deep examination of two major regions of the sky, the XXL sounding is the first X-ray study to detect enough clusters of galaxies and AGN to trace the large-scale structure of the Universe and its evolution. in time with unprecedented details.

Read more in : Dessiner l'univers: les rayons X apportent une nouvelle lumière (in French)

May 23, 2018
The European Spatial Agency retains the mission of exploration of galaxies

The SPICA infrared space telescope has been shortlisted by the European Space Agency (ESA) to participate in the final competition which will see in September 2021 the choice of the next mission of medium size ESA (M5 mission). SPICA is a large infrared telescope (diameter 2.5 m) fully cooled to a temperature of only a few degrees above absolute zero. This concept was proposed to ESA as part of the competition for the M5 mission of the "Cosmic Vision" program (25 proposals submitted) by a consortium of European research laboratories led by Holland in close collaboration with the space agency Japan (JAXA), and in which the CEA (Département d'Astrophysique of CEA-Irfu), the CNRS and their associated universities participate in France with the support of CNES.

See the French version for more : La mission SPICA en compétition pour l'ESA

 

May 22, 2018
New statistical methods reveal the finest details of the Universe

A team led by University College London (UCL), in collaboration with the Astrophysics Department of CEA-Irfu, has significantly improved the analysis of dark matter maps in the Universe with new methods of data analysis. The maps produced by this analysis demonstrate the power of these new innovative methods for analyzing future large data sets such as those expected from the upcoming EUCLID cosmological mission. These results are published in the MNRAS journal.

Apr 19, 2018

The mass distribution of the different stars formed from a collapsing gas cloud has just been successfully reproduced by two researchers from the Astrophysics Department/AIM Laboratory of CEA-Irfu. The collapse of a gas cloud of 1000 solar mass has been reconstructed thanks to numerical simulations, varying the density and the influence of turbulence. The results of these simulations show the emergence of a characteristic mass that corresponds well to that observed and this largely independently of the initial conditions and directly related to the behavior of the gas. This leads to a very good reproduction of the different masses of stars observed. So far, the mass distribution of stars has remained largely unexplained. These results are published in two articles of the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

Feb 05, 2018
A galactic cohabitation more hectic than expected

The MegaCam camera developed at CEA-Irfu has revealed previously unsuspected structures within the famous Stephan Quintet, a spectacular combination of five galaxies. The discovery of a very large red halo, consisting of old stars, centered on one of the elliptical galaxies, NGC 7317, shows that the group of galaxies is still in very strong interaction, an aspect totally ignored in previous studies. This interaction shows that Stephan's Quintet is still the scene of generalized galactic cannibalism, in contradiction with the current theoretical predictions, which will therefore have to be revised. These results, from a team from the Strasbourg Astronomical Observatory, the CEA Astrophysics Department and the Lund Observatory (Sweden) are published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society issue of January 2018.

Jan 19, 2018
Giant galaxies that no longer form stars have 100 times more gas than expected.

By succeeding for the first time to analyze the light of nearly 1000 very distant elliptical galaxies, more than 10 billions light-years away, a team of researchers including three astrophysicists from the Astrophysics Department of CEA-Irfu has just revealed that these galaxies of the beginning of the universe contain a lot of gas but do not form stars. A real enigma that challenges our understanding of the evolution of these giant galaxies. These results are published in the journal Nature Astronomy of January 16, 2018.

Nov 08, 2018
Outstanding results from this Japanese X-rays observatory

Despite a short period of activity, the japanese space agency (Jaxa) Hitomi satellite has shown its full potential by delivering relevant information’s on several celestial objects. In a series of works based on these observations and gathered in an issue of the review Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan (PASJ), the Hitomi collaboration (among it researchers from the Astrophysical Department of CEA-Irfu Saclay) presents results that take advantage of the exceptional spectral resolution of the SXS spectrometer, one of the payload instrument. At the heart of this work is a detailed study of the dynamics of plasma in the center of an active galactic nucleus, of the ejecta of several supernova remnants, of the composition of matter in a binary system or the search for X and radio correlations in the Crab pulsar thanks to the high temporal resolution. Performed during the verification and calibration phase of the instruments before the satellite failed, these observations and the quality of the results confirm the community's choice on the instruments and the high potential of the high resolution X-rays spectroscopy. The Hitomi team is currently preparing its successor, Xrism (X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) and ESA is on its side working on the Athena project, a major X-rays observatory in which CEA is deeply involved

 

Read more in : Haute résolution pour le satellite Hitomi (in French)

Nov 07, 2018

A prototype of the MXT camera arrived at the CNES in Toulouse on 25 October 2018. This is the Structural and Thermal Model (STM), which will be integrated into the telescope that will be sent to China to be mounted on the SVOM satellite Qualification Model.


The objective of this model is to validate the thermo-mechanical design of the camera. It also makes it possible to check the manufacturing and assembly capacity of the various components, which represent more than 1,000 elements. The model realized includes all the camera subassemblies with a good level of representativeness of the flight model, both on its external design (interfaces with the telescope) and on its internal design (harnesses, connectors...). The electrical parts (detector, electronic boards, motor) are replaced by weights and heaters to simulate their mechanical and thermal behaviour. 

Sep 26, 2018

X-ray photons were detected for the first time in late August 2018 with an engineering model of the SVOM MXT focal plane. This is an important step towards the validation of the design of the detection chain.
The MXT telescope, for Microchannel X-ray Telescope, will be flown on board the SVOM satellite, a collaborative project between France (CNES) and China (CAS, CNSA) to study gamma-ray bursts. It aims at detecting soft X-rays (0.2 to 10 keV) at during the early phases of the afterglow emission, and at providing an accurate (smaller than 1 arc minute) position of the burst. Irfu is in charge of the design and realization of the telescope camera, integrating a pnCCD (provided by MPE) X-ray imaging spectrometer assembled on a dedicated ceramic board. The flight model of the detector must be integrated into the camera in one year from now.



 

May 10, 2018
THESEUS pre-selected for an ESA M5 mission

On May 7, 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the three selected space missions, out of the 25 proposed, for the fifth ESA middle class mission in its scientific program Cosmic Vision, whose launch date is planned in 2032. One of these three missions is the THESEUS project (Transient High-Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor), a project developed in recent years by a large European consortium in which the Astrophysics Department-AIM Laboratory of CEA-Irfu plays a major role. THESEUS aims to explore the early Universe (the first billion years) through gamma ray bursts (GRBs), the most extreme explosions of the cosmos, and to provide accurate detection, localization, and distance measurement of gravitational waves and neutrinos sources, as well as many other transient celestial sources.

 

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