NuSTAR Bringing the High Energy Universe into Focus

Astronomers have discovered a new way to determine the current expansion rate of the Universe, known as the Hubble constant, using X-ray observations of supermassive black holes at the centre of distant galaxies that are gobbling up huge amounts of gas, known as active galactic nuclei. This could settle an on-going dispute between the two existing methods, which disagree on the age of the Universe by more than a billion years.

NASA has announced the eighth opportunity for scientists around the world to propose for observations using the NuSTAR X-ray space telescope. This General Observer (GO) Program is part of an extended mission plan approved by NASA that offers observing time for basic research investigations selected in a competitive process. Proposals for observations to be made within the eighth cycle of the NuSTAR GO program are due on January 28th, 2022.

With the goal of understanding why the Sun’s corona is so much hotter than its surface, NuSTAR obtained high-energy X-ray observations of the solar corona in coordination with the July 30th suborbital sounding rocket flight of the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) low-energy X-ray instrument.