21 Oct 2016
ESA’s Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics (Athena) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be key ingredients of the battery of next generation astronomical observatories in the late 2020s. These facilities will dominate the X-ray and radio windows respectively. Athena is set to study the hot and energetic Universe, specifically the assembly and evolution of hot baryons in large-scale structures and the influence of accretion into supermassive black holes on shaping galaxies. The SKA will also address a broad range of exciting science, from the observation of the very first stars and galaxies to the study of gravitational waves using pulsars and black holes, or the search for signatures of life in the galaxy.
The Athena Science Study Team (ASST) and the SKA Organisation have agreed to undertake an exercise to identify and develop potential synergies between both large observatories. The Athena and SKA science objectives have areas in common, and combining data from the two facilities will result in a very exciting scientific added value. Themes where strong potential synergies have been preliminarily identified include galaxy clusters, AGN feedback, obscured AGN and transient phenomena.
A SKA-Athena Synergy Team (SAST) has been appointed to explore and develop all foreseeable scientific synergies and, together with community experts, will produce the SKA-Athena Synergy White Paper. Four international leading figures, covering the relevant scientific areas and both wavelength domains, conform the SAST: Rossella Cassano (INAF/IRA, Chair), Chiara Ferrari (OCA), Rob Fender (Oxford) and Andrea Merloni (MPE). The SAST has kicked-off its activities on 27th September 2016.
Community input will be invited through a dedicated Workshop organised by the SAST and hosted by the SKA Organisation headquarters in Jodrell Bank, UK during the first half of 2017. A list of specific topics to be covered in that Workshop will be issued by the SAST in the autumn of 2016, together with an open call for scientists willing to come to the Workshop and provide input for the SKA-Athena Synergy White Paper.
After the Synergy Workshop, the SAST will prepare the SKA-Athena Synergy White Paper, which will be delivered to ESA’s ASST and the SKA Organisation around September 2017 and subsequently made public. “Athena‘s science output will be greatly enhanced when put together with observationsfrom other large facilities in the late 2020s like SKA”, said Xavier Barcons, from ESA’s Athena Science Study Team. “Although it is often said that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, this adage will certainly apply to the collaborative use of the Athena and SKA Observatories”, said Robert Braun, the SKA Science Director, “since the combination of these two extreme ends of the electromagnetic spectrum provides powerful astrophysical constraints.”
Image: The SKA-Athena Synergy Team (SAST) is working to identify and develop potential synergies between the SKA and the Athena X-ray observatory.