Chandra's Impact on Astrophysics and Active Galaxy Research
ORAL · Invited
Abstract
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched on 23 July 1999 by the Space
Shuttle Columbia. Now celebrating its 20th year of operations, Chandra
continues to be an indispensable tool for expanding the frontiers of knowledge
throughout astrophysics. Chandra's unique, sub-arcsecond, spatial resolution
and high precision spectroscopy have led to major advances in our understanding
of celestial sources from exo-planetary atmospheres to clusters of galaxies,
cosmology to the merging neutron stars found via gravitational waves.
I will provide a review of Chandra and its broad scientific impact (>7300
science papers to date), before concentrating on Chandra's impact on our
knowledge and understanding of active galaxies, and the super-massive black holes located in
their cores.
Shuttle Columbia. Now celebrating its 20th year of operations, Chandra
continues to be an indispensable tool for expanding the frontiers of knowledge
throughout astrophysics. Chandra's unique, sub-arcsecond, spatial resolution
and high precision spectroscopy have led to major advances in our understanding
of celestial sources from exo-planetary atmospheres to clusters of galaxies,
cosmology to the merging neutron stars found via gravitational waves.
I will provide a review of Chandra and its broad scientific impact (>7300
science papers to date), before concentrating on Chandra's impact on our
knowledge and understanding of active galaxies, and the super-massive black holes located in
their cores.
*This work is supported by NASA Contract NAS8-03060 (Chandra X-ray Center) awarded to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for the operation and science support of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
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Presenters
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Belinda J Wilkes
- Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian