MAXI

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 proposed by the X-ray group of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, RIKEN, in 1996 to the National Space Development Agency of Japan, NASDA (now part of JAXA), and approved in 1997.

The main objectives of MAXI are early detection of X-ray transient events, and monitoring the intensity fluctuation of known X-ray sources over long periods by scanning the all sky in soft and hard X-ray.
To achive these goals, MAXI comprises of :

• two semi-circular arc-shaped X-ray slit cameras with wide FOVs. In the 92 minutes it takes the ISS to orbit the earch, MAXI gets a 360 deg image of the entire sky.
• two kinds of X-ray detectors, collecting events from the slit cameras: a gas proportional counters, the Gas Slit Camera (GSC; 2-30 keV), and a X-ray CCD, Solid-state Slit Camera (SSC; 0.5-12 keV).

The data processing and operations are conducted jointly by JAXA, RIKEN, Osaka University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Aoyama Gakuin University, Nihon University, Kyoto University, Miyazaki University and Chuo University. The MAXI archive is hosted at the DARTS/ISAS and a copy is also present at the HEASARC.