Title: Development of the NuSTAR Optics and Highlights from the NuSTAR Galactic Plane Survey

Speaker：Prof.Charles J. Hailey

Moderator: Prof.ZHANG Shuangnan

Time:14:30, August 20

Place: B326, IHEP Main Building

Abstract:

The speaker will present a description of the development of the optics for the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) experiment. NuSTAR is an Explorer class mission, and its twin telescopes are the first capable of focusing hard X-rays. NuSTAR was launched in June of 2012. NuSTAR operates in the 3-79 keV energy band, and provides arcminute imaging capability. The optics contain several notable innovations, including the first use of thermally-slumped glass optics, and a novel glass mounting scheme that substitutes a mechanical alignment procedure for an optical one. Given the high angular resolution of NuSTAR, a major goal was the study of the crowded environment around the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center. The speaker will present some of the highlights of the first 3 years of investigations in the Galactic Center. For fun he will also present some recent work on the tentative discovery of hard X-rays from the planet Jupiter.

About the speaker:

Charles J. Hailey is the Pupin Professor of Physics at Columbia University, and the Co-Director of the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory. He was appointed a professor at Columbia in 1995. He led the team that built the NuSTAR optics and is the leader of the NuSTAR Galactic Plane Survey team. He is also principal investigator of the GAPS experiment, a dark matter search. Prior to Columbia he worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. At Livermore he was Program Leader for Space Science and Technology and Associate Division Leader for High Temperature and Atomic Physics in the Physics Department, and Associate Program Leader for Intelligence and National Security Technology in the Non-Proliferation, Arms Control and International Security Directorate. He also worked on both medical X-ray instrumentation and laser plasmas at a small company in Michigan between postings at Livermore.