A first glimpse of the unparalleled data that will be gathered when science operations of the Japan-led XRISM (X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory start later this year has been made public.
Supernova remnant N132D lies in the central portion of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy about 160,000 light-years away. XRISM’s Xtend captured the remnant in X-Rays, displayed in the inset. At its widest, N132D is about 75 light-years across. Although bright in X-Rays, the stellar wreckage is almost invisible in the ground-based background view taken in optical light. Image Credit: Inset, JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend; background, C. Smith, S. Points, the MCELS Team and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Scientists can now get a thorough look at the chemical composition of a nearby galaxy by examining a spectrum of stellar wreckage and a picture of hundreds of galaxies taken by the satellite's science team.
XRISM will provide the international science community with a new glimpse of the hidden X-Ray sky, and we will not only see X-Ray images of these sources but also study their compositions, motions, and physical states.
Richard Kelley, The US Principal Investigator for XRISM, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA
Pronounced "crism," XRISM is spearheaded by NASA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), with support from ESA (European Space Agency). It debuted on September 6th, 2023.
It will investigate the hottest spots, biggest structures, and objects with the highest gravity in the cosmos. It is intended to detect X-Rays with energies up to 12,000 electron volts. In contrast, visible light has between two and three electron volts of energy.
Resolve and Xtend, the two instruments of the mission, are each at the center of an X-Ray Mirror Assembly that was created and constructed at Goddard.
NASA and JAXA created the microcalorimeter spectrometer known as Resolve. It is housed inside a refrigerator-sized container filled with liquid helium and runs at a temperature just slightly above absolute zero.
Resolve's 6-by-6-pixel detector warms up in proportion to incoming X-Rays. The device measures the energy of each individual X-Ray, providing previously unobtainable source information.
The mission team utilized Resolve to investigate N132D, a supernova remnant and among the most luminous X-Ray sources within the Large Magellanic Cloud. This dwarf galaxy resides approximately 160,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. The expanding remnants are thought to be roughly 3,000 years old, formed by the collapse and explosion of a star approximately 15 times the mass of the Sun when it depleted its fuel.
There are peaks in the Resolve spectrum that correspond to silicon, sulfur, calcium, argon, and iron. This is the object's most comprehensive X-Ray spectrum ever acquired, showcasing the amazing science the mission will perform once normal operations start later in 2024.
These elements were forged in the original star and then blasted away when it exploded as a supernova. Resolve will allow us to see the shapes of these lines in a way never possible before, letting us determine not only the abundances of the various elements present but also their temperatures, densities, and directions of motion at unprecedented levels of precision. From there, we can piece together information about the original star and the explosion.
Brian Williams, XRISM Project Scientist, NASA, Goddard
JAXA developed Xtend, the second instrument aboard XRISM, which is an X-Ray imager. Because of its wide field of view, XRISM can see a region that is almost 60% bigger than the full moon's average apparent size.
An X-Ray image of Abell 2319, a dense galaxy cluster located in the northern constellation Cygnus and approximately 770 million light-years away, was taken by Xtend. It is presently going through a significant merger event and is the seventh brightest X-Ray cluster in the sky.
The cluster, which demonstrates Xtend's broad field of vision, is 3 million light-years across.
Even before the end of the commissioning process, Resolve is already exceeding our expectations. Our goal was to achieve a spectral resolution of 7 electron volts with the instrument, but now that it’s in orbit, we’re achieving 5. What that means is we’ll get even more detailed chemical maps with each spectrum XRISM captures.
Lillian Reichenthal, XRISM Project Manager, NASA, Goddard.
Despite a problem with its detector's aperture door, Resolve is operating at peak efficiency and has already initiated fascinating scientific research. Despite multiple tries, the door that was intended to shield the detector prior to launch has not opened as intended.
Rather than stopping the mission at 300 electron volts as planned, the door stops lower-energy X-Rays. The XRISM team is looking into several strategies for unlocking the door and will keep examining the phenomenon. There is no impact on the Xtend device.