Scientific goals NewAthena: from stars and black holes to the cosmic web

NewAthena constitutes an ESA flagship X-ray observatory mission, providing an order-of-magnitude improvement in sensitivity, spectroscopy and survey capabilities with respect to existing observatories. It will address many open questions in modern astrophysics, such as: the effect of stars on the habitability of their planets, the temperature and pressure in neutron stars, the production and distribution of metals throughout the Universe  and the effects of supermassive black holes on their host galaxy evolution. It will also contribute a key element to the field of multi-messenger astrophysics, in which conventional telescopes are used together with gravitational wave detectors and neutrino observatories.

SRON astronomers will amongst others focus on how active supermassive black holes shape their host galaxies and the surrounding cosmic web. ‘Powerful black hole jets can expel chemical elements like carbon, oxygen, iron or silicon, out of the galaxy in which they were produced, and spread them over distances of many millions of light years,’ says Aurora Simionescu (SRON). ‘NewAthena will actually enable us to observe how this fascinating interaction is happening, revealing aspects of it that are simply impossible to grasp with current instruments.’

‘Neutron stars are the only places in the Universe where stable forms of strange matter may exist,’ says Anna Watts (UvA). ‘To hunt for this, X-ray astronomers take advantage of relativistic effects that let us measure neutron star mass and radius. NewAthena’s capabilities – in particular its large area and very low background – will allow a step change in our efforts to understand the nature of ultradense nuclear matter.’

This study builds on the legacy of many years of scientific and technical work at ESA, in the Instrument Consortia (Wide Field Imager and X-ray Integral Field Unit), the international partners (NASA and JAXA), and by the broad Athena community.

Mike Cruise, Matteo Guainazzi, James Aird, Francisco J. Carrera, Elisa Costantini, Lia Corrales, Thomas Dauser, Dominique Eckert, Fabio Gastaldello, Hironori Matsumoto, Rachel Osten, Pierre-Olivier Petrucci, Delphine Porquet, Gabriel W. Pratt, Nanda Rea, Thomas H. Reiprich, Aurora Simionescu, Daniele Spiga & Eleonora Troja, ‘The NewAthena mission concept in the context of the next decade of X-ray astronomy’, Nature Astronomy