Scientific Seminars

The upcoming Indian Astronomy mission

Dipankar Bhattacharya
IUCAA, Pune

2010-01-26    11.00    Merate - POE

India is preparing to launch a multi-wavelength astronomy satellite, currently named ASTROSAT, in about a year's time. This 1.5-ton satellite will carry five science payloads. A proportional counter array with area similar to that aboard RXTE, but sensitivity extended to over 60 keV, a twin UV-optical telescope, a wolter telescope for soft X-rays, and a Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride hard X-ray imager will be co-aligned for simultaneous pointed observations at these wavebands. A Scanning Sky Monitor, similar to the RXTE ASM, will have an independent pointing mechanism for patrolling the sky every few hours, in order to locate bright X-ray sources that appear. The mission will be especially suited for X-ray timing of compact star binaries, multi-wavelength monitoring of AGNs, cyclotron line spectroscopy of newtron stars, UV imaging of nearby galaxies and many other exciting science areas. This talk will describe the mission and its projected capabilities, science plans and data policy.