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To find and download HEASARC data in the cloud, you can use astroquery.heasarc or download our new tool, hark.

The HEASARC and NuSTAR teams are greatly saddened by the sudden passing of Katja Pottschmidt. Most recently Katja was the lead scientist for the NuSTAR Guest Observer Facility (GOF), a role she had supported for many years. During her science career she worked on many other high energy astrophysics missions and played an integral role in advancing our knowledge of the universe. She was a wonderful colleague and friend and will be keenly missed by all who knew her.

MAXI

MAXI Mission Site

MAXI in the clean room with all final covers installed

The Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) is the first experiment to be installed on the Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility (JEM-EF or Kibo-EF) on the International Space Station (ISS), and the first high energy astrophysical experiment placed on the space station. MAXI was launched with the Kibo Exposed Facility on the space shuttle Endeavour (STS-127) on July 15, 2009 and delivered to the ISS. MAXI started observations in August 2009 and was originally intended for a two year operations period, but they were extended and approved through March 2021.

Mission Characteristics

* Lifetime : August 2009–present
* Energy Range : 0.5–30 keV
* Special Features : all-sky survey over each ISS orbit;
provide rapid detection of transients and variable sources.

* Payload :

  • Gas Slit Cameras (GSC) consist of 12 xeon-filled proportional gas counters sensitive to 2–30 keV energy range.
    Slit collimators give the GSC a 1.5° x 160° wide field of view in each of the horizontal and zenithal directions

  • Solid-state Slit Cameras (SSC) consist of one dimensional position sensitive X-ray detector (CCDs) sensitive to 0.5–12 keV energy range. The collimating slit aperature providing a narrow field of view (1.5° by 80°) in the horizontal (ISS forward motion) and vertical (zenithal) directions.

MAXI includes also a Radiation Belt Monitor to monitor radiation events

* Science Highlights:
  • Monitoring of a variety of variable and transient X-ray sources
  • Rapid locating of burst events such as novae, supernovae, and gamma-ray bursts found initially by other observatories, refining their sky locations more precisely.
  • Discovery of numerous X-ray transient sources including black hole candidates and new soft gamma-ray burst sources.
  • Transient event alerts: alerts to other observatories are distributed within 30 s of detection.
* Archive: The HEASARC hosts event data, and calibration files for MAXI.
[MAXI at RIKEN (Japan)] [MAXI at DARTS (Japan)]