Consortium
2021 is coming to an end and it is time for us to reflect on this busy year. Technical and scientific activities were numerous, with a strong involvement of all teams across the world. We were happy to witness the growth of our Consortium with almost 300 members working collectively to reach our ambitious objectives. […]
Event
The 14th X-IFU Consortium Meeting (CM14) took place virtually from 29 November to 3 December 2021. The meeting was very well attended with each plenary session welcoming over 100 participants, and the most popular one reaching 145 people. Members of the Consortium learned about the key updates related to the instrument development and its scientific […]
Newsletter
Welcome to the 20th issue of the X-IFU Gazette! Yes, it is indeed the 20th. To celebrate this great number, we have prepared some special content spread throughout this newsletter: a mystery picture and a guest article by the Athena Community Office. Keep on reading to find out more. Of course, this issue also includes […]
Science
Clusters of galaxies are the largest bound astrophysical objects in the Universe. Located at the nodes of the cosmic web, they are huge gravitational potential wells of masses about 100 to 1000 trillion times that of the Sun, filled with around 85% of dark matter and 15% of ordinary (baryonic) matter. The latter is for […]
Newsletter
Summer is upon us and we are all looking forward to some relaxing holidays. With this in mind, we have prepared a short edition of the X-IFU newsletter to give you the latest information before your break. We start, as always, with some news from the Consortium. A major step is underway with ESA’s Intermediate […]
Science
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are bright compact regions located at the centres of some galaxies. These objects are powered by the accretion of gas, through a disc, onto a supermassive black hole (~105-109 Msun) . The accretion disc emits the bulk of its light in the ultraviolet/optical range. The disc photons will then be Compton […]
Outreach
From the temperature at the heart of the instrument to the energy range of the X-rays that we will observe, discover all the key facts about this revolutionary instrument in our new infographic. More language versions will soon be available. For more multimedia tools, have a look at this page.
Newsletter
We are starting this newsletter #18 with a short update from the X-IFU Principal Investigator, Didier Barret, about the release of new X-IFU resources in time for ESA’s Red Book On the technical side, you will find out more about the Silicon Pore Optics technology and its potential to meet the Athena performance requirements in […]
Science
The Athena mirror will use an innovative technology called Silicon Pore Optics (SPO). The technology, combined with appropriate over coating, holds great potential to meet the Athena performance requirements in terms of effective area. The SPO have to match several top-level performance requirements. The most driving ones are the angular resolution and the effective area. […]