by A Chinese X-ray space telescope has already made several discoveries during its initial commissioning phase.
The Einstein Probe, with lobster eye optics and European participation, launched on January 9 on board a Chinese Long March 2C rocket.
The spacecraft has since undergone commissioning, with its instruments tested and calibrated in orbit Earth. On October 31, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced the first results of this commissioning phase, reporting discoveries of various types of transient events, or short-lived events, in which an object such as a star or black hole changes brightness briefly.
The observatory has conducted a number of space surveys and successfully captured images of a wide range of passing celestial objects, including stars, white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes, gamma-ray bursts and supernovassaid CAS.
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“We discovered about 60 very strong transient objects, nearly a thousand other (potential) transient objects, and nearly 500 stellar flares,” said Yuan Weimin, principal investigator of the mission and a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC). ) under CAS, told China Central Television (CCTV).
The Einstein Probe also has one gamma ray burst from the early universe, which Yuan says further demonstrates its sensitivity.
The satellite “observed a radiation burst that lasted almost 1,000 seconds, while other international gamma-ray burst satellites only detected a burst of 50 seconds,” Yuan said. ‘Therefore, this satellite can provide observational data that previous satellites could not capture, revealing even more previously unknown physical processes and giving us the opportunity to study astronomical events from even more remote regions of the Earth. the universe.”
Yuan also noted that the probe discovered a potentially new class of transients. The Einstein Probe detected a transient event on April 8, coded EP240408a, and recorded an X-ray flare. The unusual X-rays disappeared after about 10 days. A paper about the event from international researchers posted on the preprint site arXiv suggests that the event may have been caused by the disruption of a white dwarf by a black hole or may even represent a new, previously unknown transient class.
The Einstein Probe was also renamed ‘Tianguan’, after the observation and documentation by Chinese astronomers in 1054 of the supernova SN1054, which caused the famous Crab Nebula.
The observatory is intended to operate for three years, but this could potentially be extended for another two years.
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