Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory: Status and perspectives of a global cosmic ray detection framework
Dariusz Gora, Kevin Almeida Cheminant, David E. Alvarez Castillo, Dmitriy Beznosko, Niraj Dhital, Alan R. Duffy, Piotr Homola, Konrad Kopanski, Peter Kovacs, Ma… 展开作者
Dariusz Gora, Kevin Almeida Cheminant, David E. Alvarez Castillo, Dmitriy Beznosko, Niraj Dhital, Alan R. Duffy, Piotr Homola, Konrad Kopanski, Peter Kovacs, Marta Marek, Alona Mozgova, Vahab Nazari, Michal Niedzwiecki, Wojciech Noga, Katarzyna Smelcerz, Karel Smolek, Jaroslaw Stasielak, Oleksandr Sushchov, Dominik Ostrogorski, Krzysztof Rzecki, Krzysztof W. Wozniak, Jilberto Zamora-Saa
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Proceedings of 36th International Cosmic Ray Conference - ICRC2019 - July 24th - August 1st, 2019 Madison, WI, U.S.A
The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a project dedicated to global studies of extremely extended cosmic-ray phenomena, the cosmic-ray ensembles (CRE), beyond the capabilities of existing detectors and observatories. Up to date cosmic-ray research has been focused on detecting single air showers, while the search for ensembles of cosmic-rays, which may spread over a significant fraction of the Earth, is a scientific terra incognita. The key idea of CREDO is to combine existing cosmic-ray detectors (large professional arrays, educational instruments, individual detectors, such as smartphones, etc.) into a worldwide network, thus enabling a global analysis. The second goal of CREDO involves a large number of participants (citizen science!), assuring the geographical spread of the detectors and managing manpower necessary to deal with vast amount of data to search for evidence for cosmic-ray ensembles. In this paper the status and perspectives of the project are presented.
The Calar Alto Observatory, located at 2168m height above the sea level in continental Europe, holds a significant number of astronomical telescopes and experiments, covering a large range of the electromagnetic domain, from gamma-ray to near-infrared. It is a very well characterized site, with excellent logistics. Its main telescopes includes a large suite of instruments. At the present time, new instruments, namely CAFE, PANIC and Carmenes, are under development. We are also planning a new operational scheme in order to optimize the observatory resources.
The Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO) Collaboration is currently engaged in design and prototyping work towards the realisation of this future gamma-ray facility. SWGO will complement CTA and the existing ground-particle based-detectors of the Northern Hemisphere (HAWC and LHAASO) with a very wide field and high duty cycle view of the southern sky. Here I summarise the status of the project and plans for the future, including expectations for sensitivity and science targets as well as the status of the site search and technological developments.
The realization of multimessenger astrophysics will open new vistas upon the most energetic events in the universe. Messenger particles of all four of nature's fundamental forces, recorded by detectors on the ground and satellites in space, enable coincidence searches for multimessenger phenomena that will allow us to discover, observe, and explore these sources. The Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON) links multiple high-energy neutrino, cosmic ray, and gamma-ray observatories as well as gravitational wave facilities into a single virtual system, enabling near real-time co…
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a joint U.S./German project, is a 2.5-meter infrared airborne telescope carried by a Boeing 747-SP that flies in the stratosphere at altitudes as high as 45,000 feet (13.72 km). This facility is capable of observing from 0.3 μm to 1.6 mm with an average transmission greater than 80 percent. SOFIA will be staged out of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center aircraft operations facility at Palmdale, CA. The SOFIA Science Mission Operations (SMO) will be located at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA. First science flights beg…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. It would reach unprecedented sensitivity and energy resolution in very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. In order to reach these goals, the systematic uncertainties derived from the varying atmospheric conditions shall be reduced to the minimum. Different instruments may help to account for these uncertainties. Several groups in the CTA consortium are currently building Raman LIDARs to be installed at the CTA sites. Raman LIDARs are devices composed of a powerful laser that shoots into the at…
The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) uses the hunt for particle cascades from deep space as a vehicle for a unique "bottom-up" approach to scientific research. By engaging the non-specialist public of all ages as "citizen scientists" we create opportunities for lifelong learning for individuals as well as for cooperation and the sharing of common educational tools amongst institutions. The discoveries of these citizen scientists will feed directly into a pioneering new area of scientific research oriented on Cosmic Ray Ensembles (CRE). The detection (or non-detection) of su…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is planned to be the next-generation very-high-energy (VHE; E > 100 GeV) gamma-ray observatory. It is anticipated that CTA will improve upon the sensitivity of the current generation of VHE experiments, such as VERITAS, HESS and MAGIC, by an order of magnitude. CTA is planned to consist of two graded arrays of Cherenkov telescopes with three primary-mirror sizes. A proof-of-concept telescope, based on the dual-mirror Schwarzchild-Couder design, is being constructed on the VERITAS site at the F.L. Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona, USA, and is a candida…
With some telescopes standing still, now more than ever simple access to archival data is vital for astronomers and they need to know how to go about it. Within European Virtual Observatory (VO) projects, such as AIDA (2008-2010), ICE (2010-2012), CoSADIE (2013-2015), ASTERICS (2015-2018) and ESCAPE (since 2019), we have been offering Virtual Observatory schools for many years. The aim of these schools are twofold: teaching (early career) researchers about the functionalities and possibilities within the Virtual Observatory and collecting feedback from the astronomical community. In addition t…
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is a new instrument currently under construction for the Mayall 4-m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. It will consist of a wide-field optical corrector with a 3.2 degree diameter field of view, a focal plane with 5,000 robotically controlled fiber positioners and 10 fiber-fed broad-band spectrographs. The DESI Instrument Control System (ICS) coordinates fiber positioner operations, interfaces to the Mayall telescope control system, monitors operating conditions, reads out the 30 spectrograph CCDs and provides observer support and data …
The search for Cosmic-Ray Ensembles (CRE), groups of correlated cosmic rays that might be distributed over very large areas, even of the size of the planet, requires a globally spread and dense network of detectors, as proposed by the Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) Collaboration. This proposal motivates an effort towards exploring the potential of using even very much diversified detection technologies within one system, with detection units located even in hard-to-reach places, where, nevertheless, the sensors could work independently - without human intervention. For th…
In the past few years, cosmic-rays beyond the GZK cut-off ($E > 5 \times 10^{19}$ eV) have been detected by leading collaborations such as Pierre Auger Observatory. Such observations raise many questions as to how such energies can be reached and what source can possibly produce them. Although at lower energies, mechanisms such as Fermi acceleration in supernovae front shocks seem to be favored, top-down scenarios have been proposed to explain the existence of ultra-high energy cosmic-rays: the decay of super-massive long-lived particles produced in the early Universe may yield to a flux of ul…
The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is an infrastructure for global analysis of extremely extended cosmic-ray phenomena, so-called super-preshowers, beyond the capabilities of existing, discrete, detectors and observatories. To date cosmic-ray research has been focused on detecting single air showers, while the search for ensembles of cosmic-ray events induced by super-preshowers is a scientific terra incognita - CREDO explores this uncharted realm. Positive detection of super-preshowers would have an impact on ultra-high energy astrophysics, cosmology and the physics of f…
The new extremely large telescope projects need accurate evaluation of the candidate sites. In this paper we present the astroclimatological comparison between the Paranal Observatory, located on the coast of the Atacama Desert (Chile), and the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos (ORM), located in La Palma (Canary Islands). We apply a statistical analysis using long term databases from Paranal and Carlsberg Meridian Telescope (CAMC) weather stations. Significant differences between the two analyzed sites have been found.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international project for a next-generation ground-based gamma ray observatory, aiming to improve on the sensitivity of current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and provide energy coverage from 30 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The 9.7m Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) candidate medium-size telescope for CTA exploits a novel aplanatic two-mirror optical design that provides a large field of view of 8 degrees and substantially improves the off-axis performance giving better angular resolution across all of the field of view with respect to single-mir…
The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a project dedicated to global studies of extremely extended cosmic-ray phenomena, the cosmic-ray ensembles (CRE), beyond the capabilities of existing detectors and observatories. Up to date cosmic-ray research has been focused on detecting single air showers, while the search for ensembles of cosmic-rays, which may overspread a significant fraction of the Earth, is a scientific terra incognita. Instead of developing and commissioning a completely new global detector infrastructure, CREDO proposes approaching the global cosmic-ray anal…
The main objective of the Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is the detection and analysis of extended cosmic ray phenomena, so-called super-preshowers (SPS), using existing as well as new infrastructure (cosmic-ray observatories, educational detectors, single detectors etc.). The search for ensembles of cosmic ray events initiated by SPS is yet an untouched ground, in contrast to the current state-of-the-art analysis, which is focused on the detection of single cosmic ray events. Theoretical explanation of SPS could be given either within classical (e.g., photon-photon inter…
A status report of the second phase of the MAGIC ground-based gamma-ray facility (as of October 2009) is presented. MAGIC became recently a stereoscopic Cherenkov observatory with the inauguration of its second telescope, MAGIC-II, which is currently approaching the end of its commissioning stage.
We show the actual status of the project to implement the Astronomical Observatory of the National University of Engineering (OAUNI), including its first light. The OAUNI was installed with success at the site of the Huancayo Observatory on the peruvian central Andes. At this time, we are finishing the commissioning phase which includes the testing of all the instruments: optical tube, robotic mount, CCD camera, filter wheel, remote access system, etc. The first light gathered from a stellar field was very promissory. The next step will be to start the scientific programs and to bring support …
The Data Quality Segment Database (DQSEGDB) software is a database service, backend API, frontend graphical web interface, and client package used by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), Virgo, GEO600 and the Kamioka Gravitational wave detector for storing and accessing metadata describing the status of their detectors. The DQSEGDB has been used in the analysis of all published detections of gravitational waves in the advanced detector era. The DQSEGDB currently stores roughly 600 million metadata entries and responds to roughly 600,000 queries per day with an averag…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array is the main global project of ground-based gamma-ray astronomy for the coming decades. Performance will be significantly improved relative to present instruments, allowing a new insight into the high-energy Universe [1]. The nominal CTA southern array will include a sub-array of seventy 4 m telescopes spread over a few square kilometers to study the sky at extremely high energies, with the opening of a new window in the multi-TeV energy range. The Gamma-ray Cherenkov Telescope (GCT) is one of the proposed telescope designs for that sub-array. The GCT prototype rec…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory, will be deployed over two sites in the two hemispheres. Both sites will be equipped with four Large Size Telescopes (LSTs), which are crucial to achieve the science goals of CTA in the 20-200 GeV energy range. Each LST is equipped with a primary tessellated mirror dish of 23 m diameter, supported by a structure made mainly of carbon fibre reinforced plastic tubes and aluminum joints. This solution guarantees light weight (around 100 tons), essential for fast repositioning to any position in the sky in <20 seconds. The camera is composed of 1855 …
The successful installation and operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina has been a milestone in Astroparticle research in Latin America, generating new regional research opportunities in the field. In this context, the LAGO project, begun in 2005 with the aim of studying the high-energy component of gamma ray bursts (GRBs). This observatory consists of different arrays of water-Cherenkov detectors installed in high altitude mountains throughout Latin America. Recently, it has demonstrated the feasibility of conducting studies on the solar modulation of the galactic cosmic ray fl…
The present design of the new space observatory GAMMA-400 is presented in this paper. The instrument has been designed for the optimal detection of gamma rays in a broad energy range (from ~100 MeV up to 3 TeV), with excellent angular and energy resolution. The observatory will also allow precise and high statistic studies of the electron component in the cosmic rays up to the multi TeV region, as well as protons and nuclei spectra up to the knee region. The GAMMA-400 observatory will allow to address a broad range of science topics, like search for signatures of dark matter, studies of Galact…
The Simons Observatory (SO) will make precision temperature and polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) over angular scales between 1 arcminute and tens of degrees using over 60,000 detectors and sampling frequencies between 27 and 270 GHz. SO will consist of a six-meter-aperture telescope coupled to over 30,000 detectors and an array of half-meter aperture refractive cameras, coupled to an additional 30,000+ detectors. The unique combination of large and small apertures in a single CMB observatory will allow us to sample a wide range of angular scales over a common …
One of key scientific objectives of the Pierre Auger Observatory is the search for ultra-high energy photons. Such photons could originate either in the interactions of energetic cosmic-ray nuclei with the cosmic microwave background (so-called cosmogenic photons) or in the exotic scenarios, e.g. those assuming a production and decay of some hypothetical super-massive particles. The latter category of models would imply relatively large fluxes of photons with ultra-high energies at Earth, while the former, involving interactions of cosmic-ray nuclei with the microwave background - just the con…
LOFT (the Large Observatory for X-ray Timing), is a mission concept that was considered by ESA as a candidate for an M3 mission and has been studied during an extended >2-years long assessment phase. The mission was specifically designed to perform fast X-ray timing and probe the status of the matter near black holes and neutron stars. The LOFT scientific payload is composed of a Large Area Detector (LAD) and a Wide Field Monitor (WFM). The LAD is a 10 m^2-class pointed instrument with about 15 times the collecting area of the largest past timing missions (as the Rossi XTE) over the 2-30 keV r…
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a ground-based cosmic microwave background survey experiment that consists of three 0.5 m small-aperture telescopes and one 6 m large-aperture telescope, sited at an elevation of 5200 m in the Atacama Desert in Chile. SO will study the polarization and temperature anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The observatory will require well-understood telescope pointing and scanning. Good antenna control will allow us to execute the scan strategy devised to optimize sensitivity to our scientific goals, calibrate the system with celestial targets, and m…
Gamma-ray astronomy holds a great potential for Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Cosmology. The CTA is an inter- national initiative to build the next generation of ground-based gamma-ray observatories, which will represent a factor of 5-10 times improvement in the sensitivity of observations in the range 100 GeV - 10 TeV, as well as an extension of the observational capabilities down to energies below 100 GeV and beyond 100 TeV. The array will consist of two telescope networks (one in the Northern Hemisphere and another in the South) so to achieve a full-sky coverage, and will be com- posed…
The telescope Fabra ROA at Montsec (TFRM) is a 0.5m f/1 refurbished Baker-Nunn Camera (BNC) operated by a collaboration between the Fabra Observatory - Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Barcelona and the Spanish Navy Observatory (ROA), and installed at Montsec Astronomical Observatory (Spain). Among other capabilities, its CCD FoV (4.4°x4.4°), the telescope tracking at arbitrary RA and DEC rates, and the CCD shutter commanding at will during the exposure are specially remarkable for Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) observational programs. On Feb 2011, the TFRM participated, in the CO-…
Although the photon structure is most efficiently studied with the accelerator instruments, there is also a scientifically complementary potential in investigations on photons produced in the outer space. This potential is already being explored with gamma ray telescopes, ultra-high energy cosmic ray observatories and, since very recently, by the Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO). Unlike the former instruments focused on detection of single photons, CREDO aims at the detection of cascades (ensembles) of photons originating even at astrophysical distances. If at least a part …
The European Virtual Observatory Euro-VO has been coordinating European VO activities through a series of projects co-funded by the European Commission over the last 15 years. The bulk of VO work in Europe is ensured by the national VO initiatives and those of intergovernmental agencies. VO activities at the European level coordinate the work in support of the three "pillars" of the Virtual Observatory: support to the scientific community, take-up by the data providers, and technological activities. Several Euro-VO projects have also provided direct support to selected developments and prototy…
The South Pole Acoustic Test Setup (SPATS) has been deployed to study the feasibility of acoustic neutrino detection in Antarctic ice around the South Pole. An array of four strings equipped with acoustic receivers and transmitters, permanently installed in the upper 500 m of boreholes drilled for the IceCube neutrino observatory, and a retrievable transmitter that can be used in the water filled holes before the installation of the IceCube optical strings are used to measure the ice acoustic properties. These include the sound speed and its depth dependence, the attenuation length, the noise …
The ESA gamma-ray observatory INTEGRAL, launched on 17 October 2002, continues to produce a wealth of discoveries and new results on compact high energy Galactic objects, nuclear gamma-ray line emission, diffuse line and continuum emission, cosmic background radiation, AGN, high energy transients and sky surveys. The observing programme, fully open to the scientific community at large, is built from the community's feedback to the Announcements of Opportunity, issued about once per year. The mission's technical status is healthy and INTEGRAL is continuing its scientific operations well beyond …
The IceTop air shower array is the surface component of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the geographic South Pole. The combination of IceTop and IceCube provides a new and powerful tool to measure cosmic ray composition in the energy range between about 300 TeV and 1 EeV by detecting the electromagnetic component at the surface in coincidence with the muon bundle in the deep underground detector. The paper will give an overview of the current status of the detector and the first physics results will be presented.
We review the current status of the facility instrumentation for the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The LBT has 2x 8.4m primary mirrors on a single mount with an effective collecting area of 11.8m or 23m when interferometrically combined. The facility instruments are: 1) the Large Binocular Cameras (LBCs), each with a 23'x25' field of view (FOV). The blue and red optimized optical LBCs are mounted at the prime focus of the left and right primary mirrors, respectively. The filter suite of the two LBCs covers 0.3-1.1μm, including the new TiO (0.78μm) and CN (0.82μm) filters; 2) the Multi-Objec…
The ESA gamma-ray observatory INTEGRAL, launched on 17 October 2002, continues to produce a wealth of discoveries and new results on compact high energy Galactic objects,nuclear gamma-ray line emission, diffuse line and continuum emission, cosmic background radiation, AGN, high energy transients and sky surveys. Ten years after launch, thespacecraft, ground segment and payload are in excellent state-of-health, and INTEGRAL is continuing its scientific operations well beyond its 5-year technical design lifetime until, at least, 31December 2014. This papersummarizes the current status of INTEGRA…
The Cosmic Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a newly formed, global collaboration dedicated to observing and studying cosmic rays (CR) and cosmic ray ensembles (CRE): groups of a minimum of two CR with a common primary interaction vertex or the same parent particle. The CREDO program embraces testing known CR and CRE scenarios, and preparing to observe unexpected physics, it is also suitable for multi-messenger and multi-mission applications. Perfectly matched to CREDO capabilities, CRE could be formed both within classical models (e.g. as products of photon-photon interactions)…
The VERITAS gamma ray observatory (Amado, AZ, veritas.sao.arizona.edu) uses the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique (IACT) to study sources of Very High Energy (VHE: E > 100 GeV) gamma rays. Key science results from the first three years of observation include the discovery of the first VHE emitting starburst galaxy, detection of new Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), SuperNova Remnants (SNR), gamma ray binaries as well as strong limits on the emission of VHE gamma rays from dark matter annihilation in dwarf galaxies. In April 2010, VERITAS received funding to upgrade the photomultiplier tube c…
The IceCube Observatory at the South Pole is composed of a cubic kilometer scale neutrino telescope buried beneath the icecap and a square-kilometer surface water Cherenkov tank detector array known as IceTop. The combination of the surface array with the in-ice detector allows the dominantly electromagnetic signal of air showers at the surface and their high-energy muon signal in the ice to be measured in coincidence. This ratio is known to carry information about the nuclear composition of the primary cosmic rays. This paper reviews the recent results from cosmic-ray measurements performed w…
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a 20 kton multi-purpose liquid scintillator detector currently being built in a dedicated underground laboratory in Jiangmen (PR China). JUNO' s main physics goal is to determine the neutrino mass ordering using electron anti-neutrinos from two nuclear power plants at a baseline of about 53 km. JUNO aims for an unprecedented energy resolution of 3% at 1 MeV for the central detector, with which the mass ordering can be measured with 3 - 4 $σ$ significance within six years of operation. Most neutrino oscillation parameters in the solar and …
An X-ray Extremely wide-field Spectroscopic Surveyor (XESS, or "chess")
NASA MSFC（美国国家航空航天局马歇尔太空飞行中心）；Northwestern University（西北大学）；LLNL（劳伦斯利弗莫尔国家实验室）；INAF Rome（意大利国家天体物理研究所罗马分部）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）；NASA MSFC/USRA（美国国家航空航天局马歇尔太空飞行中心/联合研究协会）；Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory（史密森尼天体物理台）；University of Alabama, Huntsville（阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校）；NASA MSFC/University of Alabama, Huntsville（美国国家航空航天局马歇尔太空飞行中心/阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校）；University of Alaska（阿拉斯加大学）；University of Toledo（托莱多大学）；NRAO（美国国家射电天文台）；University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa（阿拉巴马大学塔斯卡卢萨分校）；NASA MSFC/ORAU（美国国家航空航天局马歇尔太空飞行中心/奥尔巴尼研究联盟）
The next generation of ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) and very-high energy neutrino observatories will address the challenge of the extremely low fluxes of these particles at the highest energies. EUSO-SPB2 (Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon2) is designed to prepare space missions to address this challenge. EUSO-SPB2 is equipped with 2 telescopes: the Fluorescence Telescope, which will point downwards and measure fluorescence emission from UHECR air showers with an energy above 2EeV, and the Cherenkov Telescope (CT), which will point towards the Earth's limb …
The Simons Observatory (SO) is a Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiment to observe the microwave sky in six frequency bands from 30GHz to 290GHz. The Observatory -- at $\sim$5200m altitude -- comprises three Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) and one Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) at the Atacama Desert, Chile. This research note describes the design and current status of the LAT along with its future timeline.
Cosmic Rays (CR) are high energy particles which come from the universe. When one of those particles enters to the atmosphere of the earth it produces an air shower, conformed by secondary particles in which the initial energy is distributed. The Pierre Auger Observatory, located in Argentina, is dedicated to the study of those events. One of the main goals is to find out where those CR are coming from and which kind of chemical composition do they have. In this work we show the status of a study of the risetime as a function of the distance to the shower core (near to the air axis of the show…
We propose a space-borne gravitational-wave detection scheme, called atom interferometric gravitational-wave space observatory (AIGSO). It is motivated by the progress in the atomic matter-wave interferometry, which solely utilizes the standing light waves to split, deflect and recombine the atomic beam. Our scheme consists of three drag-free satellites orbiting the Earth. The phase shift of AIGSO is dominated by the Sagnac effect of gravitational-waves, which is proportional to the area enclosed by the atom interferometer, the frequency and amplitude of gravitational-waves. The scheme has a s…
Cosmic Rays (CR) are particles which come to the earth from Universe. Their origin and production mechanisms are still unknown. The Pierre Auger Observatory is located in Mendoza, Argentina. It is dedicated to the study of CR. When CR arrive to the earth's atmosphere they produce a shower of secondary particles called \textit{air shower}. The surface detector (SD) of the Pierre Auger Observatory consists of tanks full of pure water, where CR produce \textit{Cherenkov radiation}, when going through them. This light is detected by three photomultiplier tubes (PMT) located on the top of each tank…
Over the past 13 years, the Chandra X-ray Observatory's ability to provide high resolution X-ray images and spectra have established it as one of the most versatile and powerful tools for astrophysical research in the 21st century. Chandra explores the hot, x-ray-emitting regions of the universe, observing sources with fluxes spanning more than 10 orders of magnitude, from the X-ray brightest, Sco X-1, to the faintest sources in the Chandra Deep Field South survey. Thanks to its continuing operational life, the Chandra mission now also provides a long observing baseline which, in and of itself…
