Chandra Probes Deeper into the Mystery of the X‐Ray Background
MAY 01, 2000
Thanks to its superb sensitivity, angular resolution, and positional accuracy, NASA’s Chandra x‐ray observatory has detected nearly all the individual sources that collectively make up the cosmic x‐ray background.
DOI: 10.1063/1.883096
One minute before midnight on 18 June 1962, an Aerobee rocket was launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Packed into its nose cone were three Geiger counters, which Riccardo Giacconi, Herbert Gursky, Frank Paolini, and Bruno Rossi hoped would detect solar x rays fluorescing off the moon. But when the four researchers analyzed the data, they instead found something more remarkable: x rays from a point source in the constellation of Scorpio and a background signal from the sky. Thus, a 10‐minute rocket flight gave birth to cosmic x‐ray astronomy, and the first cosmic background radiation was discovered.
© 2000. American Institute of Physics
