Description
Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Invisible Sky by Bernd Aschenbach ,Hermann-Michael Hahn ,Joachim Trümper
The x-ray satellite ROSAT, launched in 1990, has made a new universe visible. It has discovered over 120, 000 x-ray sources and allowed us for the first time to look in new ways at stellar explosions, galactic collisions, extremely compact pulsars, black holes, and quasars that shine 10, 000 times more strongly than the brightest galaxy. It has detected x-rays from Comet Hyakutake and from the Moon. ROSAT is one of the most successful scientific instruments ever launched. In The Invisible Sky, two of the scientists who were instrumental in the design and launching of the satellite team up with a well-known science journalist to chronicle the beginnings, early failures, planning and construction, and deployment of this most famous of x-ray observatories. They describe the cutting-edge science being done with it and show many of the most spectacular color images it has generated. This beautifully illustrated book is the first to describe for lay readers one of the most rmearkable instruments in modern astronomy.
Back cover copy
Since ROSAT, the ROentgen SATellite (named after Wilhelm Roentgen, a German physicist credited with discovering x-rays), launched in June of 1990, it has revealed an entirely new aspect of the night sky - that of objects emitting x-rays rather than the rays of light visible to the human eye. This lavishly illustrated book is the first to describe one of the most remarkable instruments in modern astronomy. It offers fascinating images and engaging accounts of a wide range of Solar System and deep space objects such as Comet Hyakutake, the Sun, the Moon, and objects outside the Milky Way.
Table of contents
Preface.- Introduction.- The Invisible Sky.- The History of X-Ray Astronomy.- X-Rays from the Sun?- A Fortuitous Discovery.- Filling up the Sky.- The Moon as Observing Assistant.- Rotating Blinders.- With Uhuru Toward New Frontiers.- Cygnus Cycles.- Magnetic Remote Sensing.- Einstein and EXOSAT.- ROSAT Odash Creating a Satellite.- A New Type of Detector.- A Key Experience.- Pulsars Odash Energy Beacons in the Universe.- The HEXE Balloon Program.- The Search for the Black Hole.- Contacts with Moscow.- ROSAT Odash The ROentgen SATellite Project.- Grazing Reflections.- Technical Preparations.- Difficult Production.- How to Glue Glass to Metal?- ROSAT Goes International.- Imaging of X-Rays.- An Artificial "Optic Nerve.- Building a Satellite.- Commands from Bavari.- Early Morning Shock.- The Most Accurate X-Ray Map.- Astro-Navigation for ROSAT.- X-Ray Astronomy in Our Galaxy.- X-Rays from a Comet.- X-Rays from the Moon.- The Demystification of the Sky.- The Sun as a Prototypical Star.- What Heats the Corona?.- The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram.- Helpful Mass Screenings.- Magnetic Fields Determine.- X-Ray Luminosity.- ROSAT Registers Strongest X-Ray Burst.- X-Ray Views into Cosmic Delivery Rooms.- X-Rays from the Sirius System.- The End of a Solar-Type Star.- Consequences of Proximity.- The Source of the X-Rays.- Magnetic White Dwarfs.- A Mysterious Gap.- Exploding Stars.- Supernova 1987 A.- ROSAT's First Measurements.- The Fast Supernova 1993.- Galactic Supernovae.- A Stellar Explosion in the Stone Age.- Supersonic Stellar Debris.- Pulsars in X-Rays.- Revealing Cooling.- Enigma Geminga.- Classical X-Ray Binaries.- Difficult Search.- Black Holes.- The Particle Slingshot SS 433.- Impenetrable Clouds.- A Hot Neighborhood.- Bubbles in the Milky Way.- The Galactic Center.- Perhaps a Black Hole?- X-Ray Astronomy Outside Our Galaxy.- Our Nearest Neighbors.- Fusion Processes on the Surface.- A New X-Ray Pulsar.- Super-Bubbles in the LMC.- The 30 Doradus Complex.- The Andromeda Galaxy.- Starburst Galaxies.- Active Galaxies.- An End to the Confusing Variety.- Multispectral Cooperation.- Gigantic Energy Beacons.- Clusters of Galaxies.- A Deep View Through the Lockman Hole.- Epilogue.- List of Acronyms.- Index.
About Bernd Aschenbach
Throughout history, what we could see of the night sky was considered the totality of the universe. But it is only a small slice of that totality. In The Invisible Sky, we see much that was once not accessible to human eyes: we see the universe by the light of x-rays. Suddenly, unimagined new views become possible: 120,000 new x-ray sources, galactic collisions, extremely compact pulsars, quasars a thousand times brighter than the brightest galaxies. This spectacular book, by the scientists who developed and operate the ROSAT observatory, is the first to tell this extraordinary instrument's story for a lay audience.