The Japanese X-ray telescope XRISM has officially started its nominal phase of operations. After its launch on September 7th 2023, XRISM went through a series of checks in the commissioning phase, which is now completed. To mark this milestone, new images have been released to the public. SRON has contributed the filter wheel including calibration source to the Resolve instrument.
Resolve
XRISM has two instruments onboard—Resolve and Xtend—complementing each other with respectively their high spectral resolution (about 5 eV) and large field of view (38×38 arcmin). Resolve has made its first spectrum of the Perseus Cluster (figure 1), a luminous cluster of galaxies 240 million lightyears away from Earth. ‘The spectrum clearly shows the signature of a very hot gas,’ says astronomer Elisa Costantini (SRON), who is part of the consortium. ‘The width of the lines gives us clues on the turbulence of the gas, which is an important indicator on the hot material origin and dynamics within the cluster.’
Xtend
Xtend made its first image of supernova remnant SN1006 (figure 2). This supernova exploded in 1006 AD and has since expanded into a sphere about 60 light-years in diameter. The expansion is still continuing, at 5,000 kilometers per second. Thanks to the large field of view of Xtend, the whole supernova remnant can be observed in one exposure. This observation gives astronomers the abundance of elements in the gas and clues about the exploded star and the explosion mechanism.