The NUclear Spectroscopic Telescope ARray (NuSTAR) mission is a NASA Explorer launched in 2012. It is the first hard X-ray focusing satellite. For this reason is hundreds of times more sensitive than previous hard X-ray missions. By operating in the energy range 3-79 keV it also extends the spectral coverage of low energy missions by ten times. It therefore complements in many ways all the major X-ray observatories such as XMM, Chandra, INTEGRAL and Swift in the exploration of the energetic Universe.
NuSTAR primary objectives are:
– the census of black holes at all scales and up to moderately early cosmic epochs (z~3);
– the characterization of Galactic compact objects;
– the study of relativistic jets in the most active galaxies as powerful cosmic accelerators;
– the map of radioactive material in Supernova remnants to understand explosion and nucleosynthesis mechanisms.
NuSTAR has worked succesfully in synergy with virtually every other high-energy instrument available, including Swift, Chandra, XMM, Suzaku, Integral and Fermi, as well as with Hubble and Spitzer.
The Italian contribution includes: the provision of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) ground station in Malindi (Kenya), data reduction software support and archival storage at the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC), contribution to the project with a team of scientists of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) that collaborates to the primary scientific mission goals.
INAF-OAR participates to the NuSTAR mission with scientists members of the Extragalactic Survey Team and of the AGN physics team. They are focusing on:
– the characterization and study of the most obscured local active galaxies which are prototypes of Active Galactic Nuclei;
– on the impact of the Supermassive Black Hole winds in the host galaxy;
– the census of the population of the most obscured AGN across the cosmic epochs.
NuSTAR Science Team people at OAR are: F. Fiore, L. Zappacosta
Other people at OAR involved in the analysis of NuSTAR data: E. Piconcelli, G. Israel
Collaborators in the roman area involved in NuSTAR: A. Marinucci (Univ. RomaTre), G. Matt (Univ. RomaTre), M. Perri (ASDC), S. Puccetti (ASDC).
Selected Pubblications:
– Puccetti, Comastri, Fiore et al. 2014, “The Variable Hard X-Ray Emission of NGC 4945 as Observed by NuSTAR”
– Feruglio, Fiore, Carniani, Piconcelli, Zappacosta et al. 2015, “The multi-phase winds of Markarian 231: from the hot, nuclear, ultra-fast wind to the galaxy-scale, molecular outflow”
– Civano, Hickox, Puccetti, Comastri, Mullaney, Zappacosta et al. 2015, “The Nustar Extragalactic Surveys: Overview and Catalog from the COSMOS Field”
– Puccetti, Comastri, Bauer, Brandt, Fiore et al. 2016, “Hard X-ray emission of the luminous infrared galaxy NGC 6240 as observed by NuSTAR”
– Zappacosta, Comastri, Fiore et al. 2017, in prep. “The NuSTAR Extragalactic Surveys: X-ray spectroscopic analysis of the bright hard-selected sample”
– Israel, Belfiore, Stella, Esposito, Casella et al. 2017, “An accreting pulsar with extreme properties drives an ultraluminous
x-ray source in NGC 5907”
Selected results:
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The brightest Furthest Pulsar in the Universe (press release)
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Winds from Supermassive Black holes
