Science with the AstroSat Soft X-ray telescope: An overview

Dewangan, Gulab C.; Singh, Kulinder Pal; Bhattacharyya, Sudip; Stewart, Gordon; Chandra, Sunil; Kamble, Nilima S.; Vishwakarma, Sandeep; Koyande, Jayprakash G.; Chitnis, Varsha

India, United Kingdom, South Africa

Abstract

The Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) aboard the AstroSat satellite is the first Indian X-ray telescope in space. It is a modest size X-ray telescope with a charge coupled device (CCD) camera in the focal plane, which provides X-ray images in the 0.3–8.0 keV band. A forte of SXT is in providing undistorted spectra of relatively bright X-ray sources, in which it excels over some current large CCD-based X-ray telescopes. Here, we highlight some of the published spectral and timing results obtained using the SXT data to demonstrate the capabilities and overall performance of this telescope.

2021 Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy
XMM-Newton 5