XRay Astronomy

Authors: Herbert Friedman

Publish Date: 1973

Volume: , Issue: , Pages: 315-335

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Abstract

Nearly a decade of preliminary xray probing with rockets and balloons culminated with the launching of the Small Astronomical Satellite SAS1 Uhuru for xray astronomy late in 1970 That satellite caps an era of discovery of fundamentally new information that describes a “violent universe” of high energy phenomena It brings us to a new level of space research with the forthcoming SASB and C missions scheduled for gammaray and xray astronomy in 1973 and 1974 and then hopefully to the High Energy Astronomical Observatory HEAO series beginning in 1977 The observations to date have revealed a host of xray sources characterized by xray powers a thousand or more times as great as the optical or radio luminosities with a remarkable range and variety of temporal variability These discrete sources are seen against a background of diffuse xrays which may be generated in interstellar or intergalactic space or in a myriad of unresolved discrete sources at great distances

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