TY - JOUR
T1 - Exploring rapid transient detection with the Athena Wide Field Imager
AU - Pradhan, Pragati
AU - Falcone, Abraham D.
AU - Kennea, Jamie A.
AU - Burrows, David N.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research has made use of data and/or software provided by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center, which is a service of the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA/GSFC. The authors would like to thank the SIXTE team especially Thomas Dauser and Jörn Wilms for their help with SIXTE simulations. We also thank the anonymous referees for their useful comments and suggestions. This work was carried out by NASA under Grant No. NNX17AB07G.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).
PY - 2020/7/1
Y1 - 2020/7/1
N2 - X-ray transients are among the most enigmatic objects in the cosmic sky. In recent years, the unpredictability and underlying nature of their transient behavior has prompted many studies. While significant progress has been made in this field, a more complete understanding of such events is often hampered by the delay in the rapid follow-up of any transient event. An efficient way to mitigate this constraint would be to devise a way for near real-time detection of such transient phenomena. The Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics/Wide Field Imager (Athena/WFI), with its 40 ′ × 40 ′ field of view and large effective area, will detect a large number of x-ray variable or transient objects daily. We discuss an algorithm for the rapid onboard or ground-based detection of x-ray transients with WFI. We present a feasibility test of the algorithm using simulated Athena WFI data and show that a fairly simple algorithm can effectively detect transient and variable sources in typical Athena WFI observations.
AB - X-ray transients are among the most enigmatic objects in the cosmic sky. In recent years, the unpredictability and underlying nature of their transient behavior has prompted many studies. While significant progress has been made in this field, a more complete understanding of such events is often hampered by the delay in the rapid follow-up of any transient event. An efficient way to mitigate this constraint would be to devise a way for near real-time detection of such transient phenomena. The Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics/Wide Field Imager (Athena/WFI), with its 40 ′ × 40 ′ field of view and large effective area, will detect a large number of x-ray variable or transient objects daily. We discuss an algorithm for the rapid onboard or ground-based detection of x-ray transients with WFI. We present a feasibility test of the algorithm using simulated Athena WFI data and show that a fairly simple algorithm can effectively detect transient and variable sources in typical Athena WFI observations.
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U2 - 10.1117/1.JATIS.6.3.038002
DO - 10.1117/1.JATIS.6.3.038002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85092748598
SN - 2329-4124
VL - 6
JO - Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
JF - Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
IS - 3
M1 - 038002
ER -