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B.M. Peterson (Ohio State University), Kronos Science Team
Kronos initiates a new era in astrophysics, fully opening the domain of time to astrophysical study. By using the natural variability of accreting sources, Kronos creates microarcsecond maps of the environments of supermassive black holes in galaxies and stellar-size black holes in binary systems and characterizes accretion processes in Galactic compact binaries. Kronos will obtain broad energy range spectroscopic data with co-aligned X-ray, ultraviolet, and visible spectrometers. The high-Earth orbit of Kronos enables well-sampled high time-resolution observations, critical for the innovative and sophisticated methods that are used to understand the accretion flows, mass outflows, jets, and other phenomena found in accreting sources. By utilizing reverberation mapping analysis techniques, Kronos produces advanced maps of unprecedented resolution of the extreme environment in the inner cores of active galaxies. Similarly, Doppler tomography and eclipse mapping techniques characterize and map Galactic binary systems, revealing the details of the physics of accretion processes in black hole, neutron star, and white dwarf binary systems. The Kronos instrument complement, sensitivity, and orbital environment make it suitable to aggressively address time variable phenomena in a wide range of astronomical objects from nearby flare stars to distant galaxies.
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