Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Apr 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002aps..aprn17013s&link_type=abstract
American Physical Society, April Meeting, Jointly Sponsored with the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American As
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
BEST (Baryonic Extragalactic Structure Tracer) is a proposed Medium-class Explorer (MIDEX) that is focused on mapping diffuse hot intergalactic and interstellar gas with high spectral resolution. We describe the four spectrographs and an imager that can over a three-year mission map the entire sky and conduct deep pointed observations of selected regions to profoundly extend, and possibly to fundamentally change, our understanding of hot matter in the Universe. This tremendously versatile suite of instruments addresses a wide range of scientific issues. We highlight areas where we believe BEST will have greatest scientific impact: detect and characterize the ``missing baryons" in the current epoch, which are primarily in moderately overdense intergalactic regions and are predicted to account for 10 - 20% of the soft X-ray background; measure accurately the extragalactic diffuse ultraviolet background, probably produced by the ensemble of intergalactic gas and galaxies over cosmological space; determine properties of the hot Galactic halo and the hot Galactic gas, crucial to understanding the evolution and dynamics of the ISM; and map H_2, a fundamental constituent of the ISM, over the entire sky.
Henry Richard
Sanders Wilton
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