Previous
abstract 
Next
abstract
Session 16 - Studies of Black Holes & Future Survey Missions.
Oral session, Monday, June 09
North Main Hall A,
An important step for astrophysics will be a deep survey of the high energy X-ray sky, i.e., >20 keV, where many objects reveal their characteristic spectral signatures and have their greatest luminosity. To maintain complementarity to surveys at lower energies it will be necessary for such a survey to detect and position many thousands of sources. HEXIS (High Energy X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer) is a concept for MIDEX-class mission to accomplish this. It would perform a deep survey and continuous monitoring of nearly the entire sky in the \sim5 - 200 keV band. HEXIS uses arrays of position-sensitive CZT detectors and coded masks to achieve 26 arcmin resolution and a 5 sigma sensitivity (>20 keV) of \sim4 milliCrab in 1 day and 0.2 milliCrab in 1 year. With these capabilities \sim5,000 sources would be discovered and localized, and have their spectra and variability characterized. Hundreds of gamma-ray bursts would be detected each year and localized to <20 arcmin. HEXIS also contains a narrow field, 5^\circ, coded mask imager for detailed studies of selected regions. This has 3 arcmin resolution and is 7 times more sensitive than the all-sky system. The HEXIS concept is described and some expected results are presented.
