| Telescope style | balloon-borne telescope X-ray telescope  |
|---|---|
| Website | gluon |
PoGOLite (The Polarised Gamma-ray Observer) [1] [2] is a balloon-borne astroparticle physics experiment which is to measure polarisation in hard X-rays and soft gamma-rays. It is sensitive to photons with an energy range of 25-80 keV. PoGOLite contains 217 phoswich detector cells (PDC) which are surrounded by a ring of side anticoincidence shield (SAS) detectors.
The pathfinder instrument containing 61 PDCs and 30 SAS detectors was scheduled to be launched from the Esrange facility in northern Sweden during summer 2011. The flight was to be the first westward circumpolar balloon flight in the northern hemisphere in 20 years and was expected to take 17–25 days.
The main targets of the pathfinder experiment are the Crab Pulsar and the high-mass X-ray binary system Cygnus X-1, which are two of the brightest objects in the energy range of PoGOLite.
The mission was launched at 1:57 am Thursday 7 July 2011 (23h57 GMT Wednesday 6 July 2011) from Esrange, Sweden. However, it was brought back down by 7:00 am from an altitude of 35 km, because of a helium leak. [3] The payload landed near Nikkaluokta just before the mountains around the Sweden-Norway border where a landing would have caused more potential damage. The payload was returned to the Esrange site on 8 July 2011 after which initial tests showed only minor damage to the payload. A second attempt was scheduled for July 2012 but was cancelled because of bad weather. The mission's third and final attempt is scheduled for July 2013. [4]
Jeffrey Alan Hoffman is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
ROOT is an object-oriented program and library developed by CERN. It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to this field, but it is also used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining. The latest release is 6.22.00, as of 2020-07-02.
The Extreme Universe Space Observatory onboard Japanese Experiment Module (JEM-EUSO) is the first space mission concept devoted to the investigation of cosmic rays and neutrinos of extreme energy (E > 5×1019 eV). Using the Earth's atmosphere as a giant detector, the detection is performed by looking at the streak of fluorescence produced when such a particle interacts with the Earth's atmosphere.
PAMELA was a cosmic ray research module attached to an Earth orbiting satellite. PAMELA was launched on 15 June 2006 and was the first satellite-based experiment dedicated to the detection of cosmic rays, with a particular focus on their antimatter component, in the form of positrons and antiprotons. Other objectives included long-term monitoring of the solar modulation of cosmic rays, measurements of energetic particles from the Sun, high-energy particles in Earth's magnetosphere and Jovian electrons. It was also hoped that it may detect evidence of dark matter annihilation. PAMELA operations were terminated in 2016, as were the operations of the host-satellite Resurs-DK1. The experiment was a recognized CERN experiment (RE2B).
Astroparticle physics, also called particle astrophysics, is a branch of particle physics that studies elementary particles of astronomical origin and their relation to astrophysics and cosmology. It is a relatively new field of research emerging at the intersection of particle physics, astronomy, astrophysics, detector physics, relativity, solid state physics, and cosmology. Partly motivated by the discovery of neutrino oscillation, the field has undergone rapid development, both theoretically and experimentally, since the early 2000s.
Archeops was a balloon-borne instrument dedicated to measuring the Cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies. The study of this radiation is essential to obtain precise information on the evolution of the Universe: density, Hubble constant, age of the Universe, etc. To achieve this goal, measurements were done with devices cooled down at 100mK temperature placed at the focus of a warm telescope. To avoid atmospheric disturbance the whole apparatus is placed on a gondola below a helium balloon that reaches 40 km altitude.
Cornelis A. "Neil" Gehrels was an American astrophysicist specializing in the field of gamma-ray astronomy. He was Chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center from 1995 until his death, and was best known for his work developing the field from early balloon instruments to today's space observatories such as the NASA Swift mission, for which he was the Principal Investigator. He was leading the WFIRST wide-field infrared telescope forward toward a launch in the mid-2020s. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The Indian Centre for Space Physics (ICSP) is an Indian non-profit research organisation dedicated to carrying out advanced research in astronomy, astrophysics and space science. It is a sister institute of the University of Calcutta. It is located in the southern part of the city of Kolkata. Its new campus is being built on Eastern metropolitan bypass behind Metro Cash and Carry. Its Ionospheric and Earthquake Research Centre (IERC) where a 24-inch optical telescope is being installed there. School and college students regularly carry out sky watching using its 10-inch telescope.
A cosmic-ray observatory is a scientific installation built to detect high-energy-particles coming from space called cosmic rays. This typically includes photons, electrons, protons, and some heavier nuclei, as well as antimatter particles. About 90% of cosmic rays are protons, 9% are alpha particles, and the remaining ~1% are other particles.
Gamma-ray astronomy is the astronomical observation of gamma rays, the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation, with photon energies above 100 keV. Radiation below 100 keV is classified as X-rays and is the subject of X-ray astronomy.
The history of X-ray astronomy begins in the 1920s, with interest in short wave communications for the U.S. Navy. This was soon followed by extensive study of the earth's ionosphere. By 1927, interest in the detection of X-ray and ultraviolet (UV) radiation at high altitudes inspired researchers to launch Goddard's rockets into the upper atmosphere to support theoretical studies and data gathering. The first successful rocket flight equipped with instrumentation able to detect solar ultraviolet radiation occurred in 1946. X-ray solar studies began in 1949. By 1973 a solar instrument package orbited on Skylab providing significant solar data.
PERDaix is a novel, small and light weight magnetic spectrometer to measure the charge and mass dependent solar modulation periodically for deeper understanding of cosmic rays. For a better understanding of sources and acceleration of cosmic particles direct measurements of cosmic rays are necessary. Also for a better understanding of the solar modulation which is expected to follow the 22-year solar cycle, time dependent measurements are needed. PERDaix is a newly designed detector which is constructed by the Department of Physics 1b, RWTH Aachen University. Being proposed to the German Space Agency in November 2009 for a participation in the BEXUS Program after a first canceled flight attempt in October 2010 the actual flight took place as a post-BEXUS-campaign flight opportunity in November 2010.
A balloon-borne telescope is a type of airborne telescope, a sub-orbital astronomical telescope that is suspended below one or more stratospheric balloons, allowing it to be lifted above the lower, dense part of the Earth's atmosphere. This has the advantage of improving the resolution limit of the telescope at a much lower cost than for a space telescope. It also allows observation of frequency bands that are blocked by the atmosphere.
The Mobile Rocket Base, abbreviated MORABA, is a department of the DLR Space Operations and Astronaut Training in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich. Since the 1960s, the MORABA has performed scientific high altitude research missions with unmanned rockets and balloons, and has developed the required mechanical and electrical systems. Their operational areas include upper atmosphere research, microgravity research, astronomy, geophysics, materials science, as well as hypersonic research.
Charles James "Chuck" Hailey is an experimental astrophysicist and Pupin Professor of Physics at Columbia University. He earned his BA in Physics from Cornell University in 1977 and his PhD from Columbia in 1983, with a thesis entitled "The Development of an Imaging Gas Scintillation Proportional Counter for Use in X-ray Astronomy." He received tenure from Columbia University in 1995. Hailey's research focuses on high energy astrophysics and experimental particle physics. He is Co-Director of the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, where he works on gamma-ray and X-ray research.
Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (CREAM) is an experiment to determine the composition of cosmic rays up to the 1015 eV (also known as the "knee prospect") in the cosmic ray spectrum.
The Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager, or FOXSI, is a sounding rocket payload built by UC Berkeley and led by Säm Krucker to test high energy grazing-incidence focusing optics paired with solid-state pixelated detectors to observe the Sun. FOXSI is composed of seven identical Wolter-I telescope modules, as well as Silicon and Cadmium Telluride strip detectors originally developed for the HXT telescope on the Japanese Hitomi mission. The FOXSI payload flew two times, most recently in 2014 and previously in 2012. Like most sounding rockets, FOXSI flew for approximately 15 minutes per mission and observed the Sun for about 5 minutes while in space. During its first flight, FOXSI successfully imaged a solar microflare in the hard x-ray band for the first time.
Mikhailo Lomonosov is an astronomical satellite operated by Moscow State University (MSU) named after Mikhail Lomonosov.
The Gamma-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (GRIS) was a gamma-ray spectrometer instrument on a balloon-borne airborne observatory. It used germanium detectors to achieve high resolution spectroscopy. GRIS was operated from 1988 to 1995 by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which called it "arguably one of the most successful gamma-ray balloon programs in history".