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Satellite Venn Diagram - Student Handout
Listed below are characteristics of satellites, or descriptions of
astronomical sources. After reading the background information on
Chandra,
Astro-E and the
microcalorimeter,
and Constellation-X,
each listed characteristic should be
placed in the appropriate place on a three-ring Venn Diagram by their
association with the satellites Chandra, Astro-E and/or
Constellation-X. Properties of the microcalorimeter may be included
as properties of Astro-E. An
example of a three ring Venn diagram is shown below. Be sure to label
appropriately the Venn diagram.
3-ring Venn Diagram
- launched in 1999
- will be launched in 2008
- consists of four individual satellites
- perform detailed studies of blackholes,
supernovas, dark matter, origin, evolution, and destiny of the universe
- launched in 2000
- more quantitative data on abundance, velocity, temperature of
gas
- superior ability to discriminate amongst different x-rays
wavelengths
- flies more than 1/3 of the way to the moon
- an array of 32 individual microcalorimeters
- exquisitely shaped for pairs of mirrors
- incorporates a three stage cooling system capable of operating the
array at 60 mK for about two years
- will be placed 1.5 million miles from Earth
- images are 25x sharper than
previous x-ray telescopes
- designed to study the universe in x-rays
- detects broadest range of x-ray wavelengths
- focusing power equivalent to the ability to read a newspaper a
half a mile away
- focus on smaller areas which will exclude picking up signals from
external medium of hot gas
- X-ray telescopes are one way to observe extremely hot matter with
temperature of millions of degrees
- data collected in hours instead days
- observatory must be placed high above Earth's surface because
Earth's
atmosphere absorbs X-rays
- deployment of observatory commanded by woman
- 10X higher spectral resolution for detecting emission
from Iron
- collecting areas 3 square meters which will detect x-ray sources
100x fainter
- a high resolution X-ray spectrometer based on a microcalorimeter
array, four CCD X-ray cameras, and a hard X-ray telescope
- detects and images X-ray sources billions of light years away
Thought Questions
In five minutes, write a summary of the capabilities of the
three observatories, based on the Venn diagram. Do the
observatories compliment each other? Where are they redundant? |
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