Colloquium: Stars and planets under the NewAthena X-ray microscope
"NewAthena" is the provisional name of the latest incarnation of the European Space Agency Large-Class X-ray observatory, to be launched in the second half of the 2030s. NewAthena constitutes an innovative mission design concept, retaining most of the scientific performance of the micro-calormeter spectrometer (X-IFU) originally baselined for Athena: more than one tausands pixels over a >4' diameter field-of-view, with each pixels enabling a resolving power >1000 in the hard X-ray band (3-10 keV). A wide-field spectroscopic survey of the X-ray sky will optimally exploit the science capabilities of a Silicon-based Wide Field Imager (WFI), aiming at detecting several hundred tausands Active Galactic Nuclei down to the reonization epoch, as well as early galaxy clusters and groups at z>1.5. The two instruments will share the focal plane of the Athena Silicon Pore Optics mirror, the largest telescope ever conceived on an approved X-ray mission. This talk will present an overview of
the NewAthena scientific objectives, with particular focus on prospective studies on stellar physics, objects in the solar system, and exoplanets.
recording: www.youtube.com/watch