[Music throughout]
XRISM is
our newest X-ray telescope in space.
It's a JAXA/NASA collaborative mission with ESA participation
and will revolutionize X-ray observations of the universe.
It does this with a one-of-a-kind sensor
that captures data with 36 supercooled pixels.
Yes, you heard that right,
this groundbreaking detector isn't measured in megapixels.
It's a six-by-six grid of 36 pixels,
but they're unlike any others.
Although this detector, called Resolve,
can create low-resolution X-ray images,
that is not what makes it unique.
Each pixel in Resolve is a microcalorimeter
so it can measure tiny amounts of heat.
A six-stage system
cools it to 50 millikelvins,
or a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.
This extreme low temperature
allows Resolve to measure how much a pixel warms
when it absorbs a single X-ray,
and therefore measure the energy
of that one particle of light.
It’s basically
a precise way of measuring
the X-ray’s color.
As a result,
XRISM can create the most detailed X-ray spectrum ever
for distant objects.
This spectrum can give a great deal of useful information,
like temperature,
what elements are present and in what quantities,
and how fast an object is moving
toward or away from us,
even if we can only see it as a dot in the sky,
too distant to resolve details.
This would be a revolutionary achievement
for a detector with a single pixel.
But Resolve has 36.
This allows XRISM to observe
“extended objects”
that aren’t point-source dots
and create spectrum maps of their different regions.
That can reveal speed
and temperature differences
in extremely hot gases.
Using that information,
scientists can determine
how nebulae and galaxy clusters have evolved
and interacted over time.
The Resolve detector was invented
and built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The detector’s success in XRISM
will enable Goddard to further the design
an follow up with X-ray microcalorimeters
with hundreds or even thousands of pixels.
So, while it may not sound as impressive as 4k
or 50 megapixels,
the Resolve detector on XRISM
will be revolutionizing our understanding
of the large-scale
high-energy universe.
And that’s pretty amazing
for a “mere” three-dozen pixels.
[NASA]