[41.06] The Missing Baryon Explorer: A Proposed SMEX Mission to Map the X-ray Emission from the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium

AAS 203rd Meeting, January 2004
Session 41 Warm-Hot IM
Poster, Tuesday, January 6, 2004, 9:20am-6:30pm, Grand Hall

[41.06] The Missing Baryon Explorer: A Proposed SMEX Mission to Map the X-ray Emission from the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium

W. T. Sanders (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Missing Baryon Explorer Team

The Missing Baryon Explorer was proposed to NASA in the most recent round of SMEX proposals. It is dedicated to high-resolution x-ray spectroscopy, with medium-resolution x-ray imaging, of the diffuse plasmas in the hot intergalactic medium, the hot Galactic halo, the hot interstellar medium, and from highly-ionized species within the solar system. The highest priority science goal is tracing the structure of the emission from the missing baryonic matter in the local universe, with a secondary science goal of understanding the role of hot material in the in the life cycles of galaxies and stars.

To achieve these goals, we propose an imaging x-ray spectrometer, an array of microcalorimeters, to provide 4-eV spectral resolution over the 40 - 2000 eV energy range. A conical-foil optic with a 1.4-meter focal length provides large collecting area and 5-arcminute image quality that matches the spatial resolution of the detectors. Observations are carried out either in pointed mode (first 4 months and after the all-sky survey) or in all-sky survey mode (months 5-10). The final 7 months of the mission combine additional science team pointed observations and guest observer pointings.

The Missing Baryon Explorer team includes major hardware contributions from the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Lockheed-Martin, and Spectrum Astro in addition to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The science team in addition includes members from Yale Univ., SRON, SAO, Princeton Univ., Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Miami, Johns Hopkins Univ., Carnegie Mellon Univ., California Inst. of Tech., Univ. of California-Berkeley, and Univ. of Alabama-Huntsville.

If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/baryons/. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.

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