Science with the Constellation-X Observatory

Format is approximately 8.5 inches by 11 inches. ii 48, [2] pages plus covers. Color illustrations. References. Jay Bookbinder became Director of Programs and Projects at NASA Ames. Dr. Tananbaum served as Director of the Chandra X-Ray Center (CXC) at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. from 1991-2014. The CXC is responsible for operating the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in orbit, for supporting the broad community of scientists who observe with Chandra, and for disseminating the Chandra science results to the public. Dr. Tananbaum received his B. A. in physics from Yale University in 1964, and his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1968. He began his career as a Staff Scientist at American Science & Engineering, Inc., and has been an Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) since 1973. He directed SAO's High Energy Astrophysics Division from 1981 through 1993. The Constellation-X Observatory (HTXS or Con-X) was a mission concept for an X-ray space observatory to be operated by NASA; in 2008 it was merged with ESA and JAXA efforts in the same direction to produce the International X-ray Observatory project, announced on July 24, 2008. The intention of the Con-X project was to provide enough X-ray collecting area to be able to feed a spectroscope of substantially higher resolution than the previous generation (XMM-Newton, Chandra and Suzaku) of space-based X-ray telescopes; this would allow the resolution of individual hot-spots at the event horizon of black holes, of warm intergalactic matter and of dynamics within galaxy clusters. The project intended to have separate low-energy and high-energy X-ray telescopes, to work from 100eV to 40keV spectrum. Dispersive optics for the spectrometer were developed, as well as a microcalorimeter-array detector providing energy resolution per pixel of about 5eV.…