Science with the $AstroSat$ Soft X-ray Telescope: an overview

TL;DR

The paper reviews the capabilities and performance of India's AstroSat Soft X-ray Telescope, highlighting its spectral and timing results in the 0.3-8 keV band, and its advantages over larger CCD-based X-ray telescopes.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the AstroSat SXT's design, capabilities, and key scientific results, emphasizing its unique strengths in X-ray spectroscopy and timing.

Findings

Demonstrated high-quality spectral data for bright X-ray sources

Showcased timing analysis capabilities of the SXT

Highlighted the telescope's performance advantages over larger instruments

Abstract

The Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) aboard the $AstroSat$ satellite is the first Indian X-ray telescope in space. It is a modest size X-ray telescope with a charge coupled device (CCD) camera in the focal plane, which provides X-ray images in the $\sim 0.3-8.0$ keV band. A forte of SXT is in providing undistorted spectra of relatively bright X-ray sources, in which it excels some current large CCD-based X-ray telescopes. Here, we highlight some of the published spectral and timing results obtained using the SXT data to demonstrate the capabilities and overall performance of this telescope.