2008/01/02 by F. Fiore, M. Arnaud, Fiore, F. +43
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0801.0409
Proc. of the workshop "Simbol-X: The hard X-ray universe in focus", Bologna 14-16 May, 2007
arxiv created 2008/01/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
Simbol-X is a French-Italian mission, with a participation of German laboratories, for X-ray astronomy in the wide 0.5-80 keV band. Taking advantage of emerging technology in mirror manufacturing and spacecraft formation flying, Simbol-X will push grazing incidence imaging up to ~80 keV, providing an improvement of roughly three orders of magnitude in sensitivity and angular resolution compared to all instruments that have operated so far above 10 keV. This will open a new window in X-ray astronomy, allowing breakthrough studies on black hole physics and census and particle acceleration mechanisms. We describe briefly the main scientific goals of the Simbol-X mission, giving a few examples aimed at highlighting key issues of the Simbol-X design.