The Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) mission team discovered an X-ray nova by MAXI's X-ray cameras, which are working on the Exposed Facility of the Japanese Experiment Module "KIBO" of the International Space Station. The team immediately reported their discovery to the world. This X-ray nova emerged in the constellation of Ophiuchus, and the MAXI nova alert system detected its emergence at around 7:00 p.m. on September 25, 2010 (Japan Standard Time, all the following dates and times are JST.) The discovery was immediately notified to all researchers registered on the MAXI mailing list, and with their detailed analysis the MAXI team confirmed that it is an uncatalogued X-ray source. The nova was named "MAXI J1659-152," and the discovery was reported to the world through the Astronomer's Telegram, ATel, at around 1:00 a.m. on September 26. Source Jaxa
A new telescope to scan for transient X-ray sources was installed on the International Space Station last week, giving astronomers a new tool for finding flaring suns, black holes and exploding stars. The Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image, or MAXI, will scan the sky once every 96 minutes as the space station orbits Earth. The data will be transmitted via satellite networks live and distributed through the Internet by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, which designed and owns the telescope.
Title: The MAXI Mission on the ISS: Science and Instruments for Monitoring All Sky X-Ray Images Authors: Masaru Matsuoka (1), Kazuyoshi Kawasaki (1), Shiro Ueno (1), Hiroshi Tomida (1), Mitsuhiro Kohama (1 and 2), Motoko Suzuki (1), Yasuki Adachi (1), Masaki Ishikawa (1), Tatehiro Mihara (2), Mutsumi Sugizaki (2), Naoki Isobe (2), Yujin Nakagawa (2), Hiroshi Tsunemi (3), Emi Miyata (3), Nobuyuki Kawai (4), Jun Kataoka (4), Mikio Morii (4), Atsumasa Yoshida (5), Hitoshi Negoro (6), Motoki Nakajima (6), Yoshihiro Ueda (7), Hirotaka Chujo (2), Kazutaka Yamaoka (5), Osamu Yamazaki (5), Satoshi Nakahira (5), Tetsuya You (5), Ryoji Ishiwata (6), Sho Miyoshi (6), Satoshi Eguchi (7), Kazuo Hiroi (7), Haruyoshi Katayama (8), Ken Ebisawa (9) ((1) ISS Science Project Office, ISAS, JAXA, (2) Cosmic Radiation Laboratory, RIKEN, (3) Department of Earth and Space Science, Osaka University, (4) Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, (5) Department of Physics and Mathematics, Aoyama Gakuin University, (6) Department of Physics, Nihon University, (7) Department of Astronomy, Kyoto University, (8) Earth Observation Research Centre, JAXA, (9) ISAS, JAXA)
The MAXI (Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image) mission is the first astronomical payload to be installed on the Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF) on the ISS. It is scheduled for launch in the middle of 2009 to monitor all-sky X-ray objects on every ISS orbit. MAXI will be more powerful than any previous X-ray All Sky Monitor (ASM) payloads, being able to monitor hundreds of AGN. MAXI will provide all sky images of X-ray sources of about 20 mCrab in the energy band of 2-30 keV from observation on one ISS orbit (90 min), about 4.5 mCrab for one day, and about 1 mCrab for one month. A final detectability of MAXI could be 0.2 mCrab for 2 year observations.