Flaring stars, black hole outbursts and gamma-rays are just some of the cosmic exotica that Einstein Probe will hunt for.
A joint Chinese and European X-ray telescope mission called Einstein Probe is successfully viewing the universe in widescreen, with a telescope design that mimics the eyes of lobsters.
As it turns out, lobsters are the solution — lobster vision, that is. What's more, scientists cottoned onto this basic idea back in the late 1970s, but it has taken decades to successfully adapt that idea for use on X-ray telescopes in space. WXT is looking for things that go bump in the night: so-called X-ray transients, which are often random or one-off events like a star flaring or a dormant black hole suddenly lighting up with activity when swallowing a small parcel of matter. It also includes phenomena like exploding stars and merging neutron stars that are the source of gravitational waves reverberating throughout the cosmos.
Even though it is still in the testing phase, WXT in particular is already proving its purpose. The Beijing symposium revealed that WXT found its first X-ray transient on Feb. 19, an event associated with a long gamma-ray burst produced by the destruction of a massive star. Since then, WXT has discovered another 141 transients including 127 stars unleashing X-ray flares.
"It is astounding that even though the instruments were not yet full calibrated, we could already perform a time-critical follow-up observation using the FXT instrument of a fast X-ray transient first spotted by WXT," added Erik Kuulkers, who is the European Space Agency's Project Scientist for Einstein Probe."It shows what Einstein Probe will be capable of during its survey.
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