Previous
abstract 
Next
abstract
Session 52 - HEAD I: First Results from RXTE.
Oral session, Tuesday, January 14
Frontenac Ballroom,
The emission from neutron stars and black holes (massive and stellar-sized) covers a broad range of energies that includes the x-ray and low energy gamma-ray band. Many processes are involved that shed light on the matter distribution near the object, how and where the matter flows, the ionization level of matter, the chemical abundances of the matter, the distribution of emission and reprocessing of the primary flux, temperatures and temperature distributions, and the basic thermal or non-thermal nature of the emission. In addition characteristics of the collapsed object itself, such as magnetic field, rotation, and general relativistic properties may be studied. Many, if not all, of these scientific questions cannot be answered by observations in restricted energy bands, and require knowledge of the emission over broad energy ranges. The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) began observing cosmic sources over the 2-250 keV band two weeks after its launch on 30 December 1995. Selected results from the first year of RXTE will be presented for radio pulsars, binary x-ray pulsars, stellar black holes, active galaxies, and supernova remnants will be discussed.
