The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit: a consolidated design for the system requirement review of the preliminary definition phase

The Athena X-ray Integral Unit (X-IFU) is the high resolution X-ray spectrometer, studied since 2015 for flying in the mid-30s on the Athena space X-ray Observatory, a versatile observatory designed to address the Hot and Energetic Universe science theme, selected in November 2013 by the Survey Science Committee. Based on a large format array of Transition Edge Sensors (TES), it aims to provide spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy, with a spectral resolution of 2.5 eV (up to 7 keV) over an hexagonal field of view of 5 arc minutes (equivalent diameter). The X-IFU entered its System Requirement Review (SRR) in June 2022, at about the same time when ESA called for an overall X-IFU redesign (including the X-IFU cryostat and the cooling chain), due to an unanticipated cost overrun of Athena. In this paper, after illustrating the breakthrough capabilities of the X-IFU, we describe the instrument as presented at its SRR, browsing through all the subsystems and associated requirements. We then show the instrument budgets, with a particular emphasis on the anticipated budgets of some of its key performance parameters. Finally we briefly discuss on the ongoing key technology demonstration activities, the calibration and the activities foreseen in the X-IFU Instrument Science Center, and touch on communication and outreach activities, the consortium organisation, and finally on the life cycle assessment of X-IFU aiming at minimising the environmental footprint, associated with the development of the instrument. Thanks to the studies conducted so far on X-IFU, it is expected that along the design-to-cost exercise requested by ESA, the X-IFU will maintain flagship capabilities in spatially resolved high resolution X-ray spectroscopy, enabling most of the original X-IFU related scientific objectives of the Athena mission to be retained. (abridged).Comment: 48 pages, 29 figures, Accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy with minor editin

The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit: a consolidated design for the system requirement review of the preliminary definition phase

The Athena X-ray Integral Unit (X-IFU) is the high resolution X-ray spectrometer studied since 2015 for flying in the mid-30s on the Athena space X-ray Observatory. Athena is a versatile observatory designed to address the Hot and Energetic Universe science theme, as selected in November 2013 by the Survey Science Committee. Based on a large format array of Transition Edge Sensors (TES), X-IFU aims to provide spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy, with a spectral resolution of 2.5 eV (up to 7 keV) over a hexagonal field of view of 5 arc minutes (equivalent diameter). The X-IFU entered its System Requirement Review (SRR) in June 2022, at about the same time when ESA called for an overall X-IFU redesign (including the X-IFU cryostat and the cooling chain), due to an unanticipated cost overrun of Athena. In this paper, after illustrating the breakthrough capabilities of the X-IFU, we describe the instrument as presented at its SRR (i.e. in the course of its preliminary definition phase, so-called B1), browsing through all the subsystems and associated requirements. We then show the instrument budgets, with a particular emphasis on the anticipated budgets of some of its key performance parameters, such as the instrument efficiency, spectral resolution, energy scale knowledge, count rate capability, non X-ray background and target of opportunity efficiency. Finally, we briefly discuss the ongoing key technology demonstration activities, the calibration and the activities foreseen in the X-IFU Instrument Science Center, touch on communication and outreach activities, the consortium organisation and the life cycle assessment of X-IFU aiming at minimising the environmental footprint, associated with the development of the instrument. Thanks to the studies conducted so far on X-IFU, it is expected that along the design-to-cost exercise requested by ESA, the X-IFU will maintain flagship capabilities in spatially resolved high resolution X-ray spectroscopy, enabling most of the original X-IFU related scientific objectives of the Athena mission to be retained. The X-IFU will be provided by an international consortium led by France, The Netherlands and Italy, with ESA member state contributions from Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, with additional contributions from the United States and Japan.The French contribution to X-IFU is funded by CNES, CNRS and CEA. This work has been also supported by ASI (Italian Space Agency) through the Contract 2019-27-HH.0, and by the ESA (European Space Agency) Core Technology Program (CTP) Contract No. 4000114932/15/NL/BW and the AREMBES - ESA CTP No.4000116655/16/NL/BW. This publication is part of grant RTI2018-096686-B-C21 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”. This publication is part of grant RTI2018-096686-B-C21 and PID2020-115325GB-C31 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033

OPUS: an interoperable job control system based on VO standards

to appear in ADASS XXX proceedings, , edited by J.-E. Ruiz and F. Pierfederici (San Francisco: ASP), ASP Conf. SerInternational audienceOPUS (Observatoire de Paris UWS System) is a job control system that aims at facilitating the access to analysis and simulation codes through an interoperable interface. The Universal Worker System pattern v1.1 (UWS) as defined by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) is implemented as a REST service to control the asynchronous execution of a job on a work cluster. OPUS also follows the recent IVOA Provenance Data Model recommendation to capture and expose the provenance information of jobs and results. By following well defined standards, the tool is interoperable and jobs can be run either through a web interface, or a script, and can be integrated to existing web platforms. Current instances are used in production by several projects at the Observatoire de Paris (CTA/H.E.S.S, MASER, CompOSE)

Comment on “Locating the source field lines of Jovian decametric radio emissions” by YuMing Wang et al.

International audienceIn this comment on the article "Locating the source field lines of Jovian decametric radio emissions" by Wang YM et al., 2020, we discuss the assumptions used by the authors to compute the beaming angle of Jupiter's decametric emissions induced by the moon Io. Their method, relying on multi-point radio observations, was applied to a single event observed on 14 th March 2014 by Wind and both STEREO A/B spacecraft from ~5 to ~16 MHz. They have erroneously identified the emission as a northern (Io-B type) instead of a southern one (Io-D type). We encourage the authors to update their results with the correct hemisphere of origin and to test their method on a larger sample of Jupiter-Io emissions

Semantic Segmentation of Solar Radio Spikes at Low Frequencies

Solar radio spikes are short lived, narrow bandwidth features in low frequency solar radio observations. The timing of their occurrence and the number of spikes in a given observation is often unpredictable. The high temporal and frequency of resolution of modern radio telescopes such as NenuFAR mean that manually identifying radio spikes is an arduous task. Machine learning approaches to data exploration in solar radio data is on the rise. Here we describe a convolutional neural network to identify the per pixel location of radio spikes as well as determine some simple characteristics of duration, spectral width and drift rate. The model, which we call SpikeNet, was trained using an Nvidia Tesla T4 16GB GPU with ~100000 sample spikes in a total time of 2.2 hours. The segmentation performs well with an intersection over union in the test set of ~0.85. The root mean squared error for predicted spike properties is of the order of 23%. Applying the algorithm to unlabelled data successfully generates segmentation masks although the accuracy of the predicted properties is less reliable, particularly when more than one spike is present in the same 64 X 64 pixel time-frequency range. We have successfully demonstrated that our convolutional neural network can locate and characterise solar radio spikes in a number of seconds compared to the weeks it would take for manual identification

ExPRES: an Exoplanetary and Planetary Radio Emissions Simulator

International audienceContext. Earth and outer planets are known to produce intense non-thermal radio emissions through a mechanism known as cyclotron maser instability (CMI), requiring the presence of accelerated electrons generally arising from magnetospheric current systems. In return, radio emissions are a good probe of these current systems and acceleration processes. The CMI generates highly anisotropic emissions and leads to important visibility effects, which have to be taken into account when interpreting the data. Several studies have shown that modelling the radio source anisotropic beaming pattern can reveal a wealth of physical information about the planetary or exoplanetary magnetospheres that produce these emissions. Aims. We present a numerical tool, called ExPRES (Exoplanetary and Planetary Radio Emission Simulator), which is able to reproduce the occurrence in a time-frequency plane of R−X CMI-generated radio emissions from planetary magnetospheres, exoplanets, or star-planet interacting systems. Special attention is given to the computation of the radio emission beaming at and near its source. Methods. We explain what physical information about the system can be drawn from such radio observations, and how it is obtained. This information may include the location and dynamics of the radio sources, the type of current system leading to electron acceleration and their energy, and, for exoplanetary systems, the orbital period of the emitting body and the strength, rotation period, tilt, and the offset of the planetary magnetic field. Most of these parameters can only be remotely measured via radio observations. Results. The ExPRES code provides the proper framework of analysis and interpretation for past, current, and future observations of planetary radio emissions, as well as for future detection of radio emissions from exoplanetary systems (or magnetic, white dwarf-planet or white dwarf-brown dwarf systems). Our methodology can be easily adapted to simulate specific observations once effective detection is achieved

Building the Data Management Plan of Observatoire de Paris

International audienceDuring the last decade, the production of science data increased in parallel with the decreasing cost of digital storage and the increase of data processing and computation capabilities. Science institute have to find a way to manage and preserve this data inflow. Most of the calls of funding agencies now require to provide a description of how the data produced in the projet will be managed (archiving, curation, distribution...) and published. This usually takes the form of a Data Management Plan. Funding agency also required more and more to select open source licences for any production of the project, for instance by enforcing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.Founded in 1667, the Observatoire de Paris is the largest French national research center for astronomy. Nearly a third of all French astronomers are working in its five laboratories and institute. Located in Paris, Meudon and Nançay, they are all associated with CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and with the major scientific universities in the Paris and Orléans area. The research conducted at the Paris observatory covers all the fields of contemporary astronomy and astrophysics: the study of the Sun and Sun-Earth relations, planets and planetary systems, star formation, the interstellar medium, the formation and evolution of galaxies, astroparticles and cosmology, time and space metrology as well as the history and philosophy of science. The Library of the Observatoire is a service entirely devoted to research. Its two missions are to provide scientists with the most complete and pertinent documentation, and to enrich a 350 year old heritage, while at the same time thinking about what today's heritage will be, and what the future will bring. Although mainly destined for the scientists of the Observatoire, it is nevertheless also open to others: scientists from different disciplines and all countries, students, school children, the general public, who are welcome and for whom it organizes scientific and technical outreach activities.Observatoire de Paris has listed a few services that needed to set up a way to formally manage their data more formally: the Informatics Department of the Observatory (DIO), which is hosting scientific computing servers and data storage facilities for the sciences teams of the observatory; the Paris Astronomical Data Centre (PADC), which provides interoperable access on data collections produced within the observatory; the Library of the observatory. Several teams (linked with projects funded by EU or space agencies) showed interest as well.Several actions have now been started by the working group: Identification of the various sources of data and data collection in each department of the Observatory; Identification of the needs in term of citation (data collections, artifacts, documents, software...) and licences; study of possible authoritative delegations (e.g., on DOI attribution, long term preservation...) and to whom; proposing a Data Management Plan template to support science teams when applying for fundings. Those actions are all aiming at building a generic Data Management Plan for the Observatory, that would propose rules and practices for preserving, distribution and sharing science products.The PADC team is deeply involved in data-related international data alliances, such as the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), the International Planetary Data Alliance (IPDA), and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). This is ensuring that: (a) this study is conducted with up-to-date technologies and concepts, and that (b) the results of the study will be discussed and advertised in those international contexts

Building the Data Management Plan of Observatoire de Paris

International audienceDuring the last decade, the production of science data increased in parallel with the decreasing cost of digital storage and the increase of data processing and computation capabilities. Science institute have to find a way to manage and preserve this data inflow. Most of the calls of funding agencies now require to provide a description of how the data produced in the projet will be managed (archiving, curation, distribution...) and published. This usually takes the form of a Data Management Plan. Funding agency also required more and more to select open source licences for any production of the project, for instance by enforcing FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.Founded in 1667, the Observatoire de Paris is the largest French national research center for astronomy. Nearly a third of all French astronomers are working in its five laboratories and institute. Located in Paris, Meudon and Nançay, they are all associated with CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and with the major scientific universities in the Paris and Orléans area. The research conducted at the Paris observatory covers all the fields of contemporary astronomy and astrophysics: the study of the Sun and Sun-Earth relations, planets and planetary systems, star formation, the interstellar medium, the formation and evolution of galaxies, astroparticles and cosmology, time and space metrology as well as the history and philosophy of science. The Library of the Observatoire is a service entirely devoted to research. Its two missions are to provide scientists with the most complete and pertinent documentation, and to enrich a 350 year old heritage, while at the same time thinking about what today's heritage will be, and what the future will bring. Although mainly destined for the scientists of the Observatoire, it is nevertheless also open to others: scientists from different disciplines and all countries, students, school children, the general public, who are welcome and for whom it organizes scientific and technical outreach activities.Observatoire de Paris has listed a few services that needed to set up a way to formally manage their data more formally: the Informatics Department of the Observatory (DIO), which is hosting scientific computing servers and data storage facilities for the sciences teams of the observatory; the Paris Astronomical Data Centre (PADC), which provides interoperable access on data collections produced within the observatory; the Library of the observatory. Several teams (linked with projects funded by EU or space agencies) showed interest as well.Several actions have now been started by the working group: Identification of the various sources of data and data collection in each department of the Observatory; Identification of the needs in term of citation (data collections, artifacts, documents, software...) and licences; study of possible authoritative delegations (e.g., on DOI attribution, long term preservation...) and to whom; proposing a Data Management Plan template to support science teams when applying for fundings. Those actions are all aiming at building a generic Data Management Plan for the Observatory, that would propose rules and practices for preserving, distribution and sharing science products.The PADC team is deeply involved in data-related international data alliances, such as the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA), the International Planetary Data Alliance (IPDA), and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). This is ensuring that: (a) this study is conducted with up-to-date technologies and concepts, and that (b) the results of the study will be discussed and advertised in those international contexts

MASER: a toolbox for low frequency radio astronomy

International audienceThe MASER (Measuring, Analysing and Simulating Radio Emissions) project provides a comprehensive infrastructure dedicated to low frequency radio emissions (typically < 50 to 100 MHz). The four main radio sources observed in this frequency are the Earth, the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. They are observed either from ground (down to 10 MHz) or from space. Ground observatories are more sensitive than space observatories and capture high resolution data streams (up to a few TB per day for modern instruments). Conversely, space-borne instruments can observe below the ionospheric cut-off (10 MHz) and can be placed closer to the studied object.Several tools have been developed in the last decade for sharing space physcis data. Data visualization tools developed by The CDPP (http://cdpp.eu, Centre de Donne_es de la Physique des Plasmas, in Toulouse, France) and the University of Iowa (Autoplot, http://autoplot.org) are available to display and analyse space physics time series and spectrograms. A planetary radio emission simulation software is developed in LESIA (ExPRES: Exoplanetary and Planetary Radio Emission Simulator). The VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access) provides a search interface that allows to discover data of interest for scientific users, and is based on IVOA standards (astronomical International Virtual Observatory Alliance). The University of Iowa also develops Das2server that allows to distribute data with adjustable temporal resolution.MASER is making use of all these tools and standards to distribute datasets from space and ground radio instruments available from the Observatoire de Paris, the Station de Radioastronomie de Nanc'ay and the CDPP deep archive. These datasets include Cassini/RPWS, STEREO/Waves, WIND/Waves, Ulysses/URAP, ISEE3/SBH, Voyager/PRA, Nanc'ay Decameter Array (Routine, NewRoutine, JunoN), RadioJove archive, swedish Viking mission, Interball/POLRAD... MASER also includes a Python software library for reading raw data.The Europlanet H2020 Research Infrastructure project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654208

MASER: a toolbox for low frequency radio astronomy

International audienceThe MASER (Measuring, Analysing and Simulating Radio Emissions) project provides a comprehensive infrastructure dedicated to low frequency radio emissions (typically < 50 to 100 MHz). The four main radio sources observed in this frequency are the Earth, the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn. They are observed either from ground (down to 10 MHz) or from space. Ground observatories are more sensitive than space observatories and capture high resolution data streams (up to a few TB per day for modern instruments). Conversely, space-borne instruments can observe below the ionospheric cut-off (10 MHz) and can be placed closer to the studied object.Several tools have been developed in the last decade for sharing space physcis data. Data visualization tools developed by The CDPP (http://cdpp.eu, Centre de Donne_es de la Physique des Plasmas, in Toulouse, France) and the University of Iowa (Autoplot, http://autoplot.org) are available to display and analyse space physics time series and spectrograms. A planetary radio emission simulation software is developed in LESIA (ExPRES: Exoplanetary and Planetary Radio Emission Simulator). The VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access) provides a search interface that allows to discover data of interest for scientific users, and is based on IVOA standards (astronomical International Virtual Observatory Alliance). The University of Iowa also develops Das2server that allows to distribute data with adjustable temporal resolution.MASER is making use of all these tools and standards to distribute datasets from space and ground radio instruments available from the Observatoire de Paris, the Station de Radioastronomie de Nanc'ay and the CDPP deep archive. These datasets include Cassini/RPWS, STEREO/Waves, WIND/Waves, Ulysses/URAP, ISEE3/SBH, Voyager/PRA, Nanc'ay Decameter Array (Routine, NewRoutine, JunoN), RadioJove archive, swedish Viking mission, Interball/POLRAD... MASER also includes a Python software library for reading raw data.The Europlanet H2020 Research Infrastructure project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654208