Scientific highlights in high energy astrophysics

• NASA's X-ray Timing Explorer, which includes UCSD's High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment was launched successfully on 1995 December 30. More information about the status of the XTE mission and new results can be found here.

  Latest news: XTE has made multiple observations of the new Galactic Center transient source GROJ1744-28, discovered by GRO in mid-December. As the only other X-ray observatory able to observe the Galactic Center region in January and February (the source is too close to the sun for ASCA and Rosat), XTE has been instrumental in refining the location of this source. This newer, smaller ``error box'' has now enabled observers at other wavelengths (optical, infrared and radio) to attempt an identification.

  For the latest developments, and more details of the XTE observations, see the GROJ1744-28 WWW page.

• The soft gamma-ray repeater in the supernova remnant N49
  by David Marsden, Rick Rothschild, and Richard Lingenfelter,
  to be published in Proc. 1995 Gamma-Ray Burst Workshop (AIP, in press).
  Recent Rosat observations may provide clues to the identity of the small class of gamma-ray bursts which have been observed to repeat over the years.

• Cygnus A - the radio galaxy at the heart of the Swan
  (as seen on UCSD TV's Quarks to Quasars )
  by Philip Blanco,
  based on work published in the Astrophysical Journal (Letters), 449, L131 (1995).
  A brief history of the ``original'' radio galaxy, together with some new results from the Very Large Array radio telescope. XTE time has also been awarded to observe this galaxy.

• The Continuous Hard X-ray Imager for Astrophysics,
  by a collaboration of CASS scientists and engineers,
  published in Proc. S.P.I.E. 1258, 13 (1995).
  NASA recently solicited proposals for the next generation of orbiting observatories. This is our proposal, to use a new strip-detector technology (CdZnTe) to provide the first imaging all-sky survey in the 10-100 keV band.

Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences