Credit: NASA/SSC
Raising XL-Calibur
The dangerous, high-energy mysteries of the cosmos are hidden from us earth-dwellers by the shield of the earth's atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere, thin as a layer of cellophane wrapped around an orange, provides essential protection from damaging cosmic radiation and cosmic rays, but also hides powerful wonders generated by black holes, neutron stars and other extreme objects. Such phenomena can only be studied and understood by rising above the atmosphere, using rockets or high-altitude balloons. High altitude balloons have many advantages: they are relatively economical, can carry enormous scientific instruments, and survey the sky for weeks at a time. On July 9, scientists launched a stadium-sized scientific balloon at the Swedish Space Corporation's Esrange Space Center, situated in an unpopulated area of northern Sweden above the Arctic Circle. The balloon carried aloft an X-ray telescope called XL-Calibur. The image above shows the solar arrays of the XL-Calibur payload in the foreground, and the scientific balloon carrying XL-Calibur in the background. XL-Calibur was built by a collaboration of about 50 scientists, lead by scientists at the Washington University in St. Louis. The X-ray data collected by XL-Calibur will help scientists understand how black holes like Cyg X-1 grow by accreting matter, and how neutron stars can accelerate sub-atomic particles to extraordinary energiesby studying how X-ray are scattered by these strange objects. This is similar to the data obtained by the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) space telescope, but XL-Calibur is sensitive to much higher energy X-rays than IXPE. The combination of polarization data from IXPE and XL-Calibur will therefore help provide a more complete picture of these extreme processes. XL-Calibur flew at an altitude of 125,000 feet, above 99.97% of the earth's atmosphere, for a total flight time in excess of 5 days.
Published: July 22, 2024
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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Monday, 22-Jul-2024 11:50:40 EDT