NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope advances astronomy with its 122 million-pixel, mostly infrared photographs taken 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Something impressive. However, the space agency’s latest sky peeper takes a different approach, performing groundbreaking space science in 36 pixels. This is not a typo. It’s 36 pixels, not 36 megapixels.
X-ray imaging and spectroscopy mission (XRISM)The project, pronounced “crism,” is a collaboration between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The mission’s satellite was launched into orbit last September and has been searching space ever since for answers to some of science’s most complex questions. The mission’s imaging equipment, Resolve, has a 36-pixel image sensor.
It took a very long time to be able to count individual pixels on an imaging chip, but here you can see the result… Each side of the array measures 0.2 inches (5 millimeters). The device produces a spectrum of her X-ray sources of 400 to 12,000 electron volts, up to 5,000 times the energy of visible light, in unprecedented detail. image credits: NASA/XRISM/Caroline Kilborn
“Resolution is more than just a camera; its detector measures the temperature of each X-ray that hits it,” said Brian Williams, XRISM project scientist at NASA Goddard. press statement. “We call Resolve a micro-calorimetric spectrometer. Each of its 36 pixels measures the tiny amount of heat produced by each incoming X-ray, revealing the lines in unprecedented detail. Because we can see the chemical fingerprint of the elements that make up the source.”
With its extraordinary pixel array, the Resolve instrument can detect “soft” X-rays with energies around 5,000 times the wavelength of visible light. Its main focus is the exploration of the hottest regions of space, the largest structures, and the most massive astronomical objects, such as supermassive black holes. Despite its limited number of pixels, each pixel in Resolve is remarkable and can produce a rich spectrum of visual data, including an energy range of 400 to 12,000 electron volts.
The agency says the device can recognize the movement of elements within a target, essentially providing a three-dimensional perspective. Gases moving toward us usually emit slightly higher energy, and gases moving away from us emit slightly lower energy. This feature opens new avenues for scientific exploration. For example, scientists can understand the flow of hot gas within galaxy clusters and carefully track the movement of various elements in the remains of supernova explosions.
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