Observing Compact Stars with AstroSat

TL;DR

This paper describes India's AstroSat mission, a space observatory designed for compact star research, highlighting its capabilities and preliminary observations of objects like the Crab pulsar and GX 301-2.

Contribution

It provides an overview of AstroSat's observational capabilities and presents initial results demonstrating its effectiveness in studying compact stars.

Findings

Successful observations of the Crab pulsar

Initial data on GX 301-2 system

Validation of AstroSat's spectral and timing capabilities

Abstract

This article presents a brief description of India's AstroSat mission which is a powerful space based observatory for compact star research. An account is given of observational constraints and spectral and timing capabilities as realised post-launch. Some preliminary results of observations of the Crab pulsar and an X-ray binary system GX~301-2 are presented to illustrate some of the capabilities of the mission.