This volume is the first of its kind on focusing gamma-ray telescopes. Forty-eight refereed papers provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific potential and technical challenges of this nascent tool for nuclear astrophysics. The book features articles dealing with pivotal technologies such as grazing incident mirrors, multilayer coatings, Laue- and Fresnel-lenses - and even an optic using the curvature of space-time.

After three decades of intense research in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, the time was ripe to summarize basic knowledge on X-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy for interested students and researchers ready to become involved in new high-energy missions. This volume exposes both the scientific basics and modern methods of high-energy spectroscopic astrophysics. The emphasis is on physical principles and observing methods rather than a discussion of particular classes of high-energy objects, but many examples and new results are included in the three chapters as well.

This volume is the first of its kind on focusing gamma-ray telescopes. Forty-eight refereed papers provide a comprehensive overview of the scientific potential and technical challenges of this nascent tool for nuclear astrophysics. The book features articles dealing with pivotal technologies such as grazing incident mirrors, multilayer coatings, Laue- and Fresnel-lenses - and even an optic using the curvature of space-time.

The `International Heidelberg Workshop on TeV Gamma-Ray Astrophysics' brought together astrophysicists from the various fields which play a role in the formation of high energy gamma-ray emission. In particular, theoretical and observational aspects of the physics and astrophysics of pulsars and quasars, the acceleration of particles at Supernova Remnants and other strong astrophysical shock fronts, and cascade processes in universal background photon fields were comprehensively discussed in more than thirty reviews by leading experts. In their entirety these reviews describe the birth of a new field of astronomy. This field concerns cosmic gamma-rays of very high energy which are observed with ground-based optical telescopes due to the Cherenkov emission of the secondary particles created by the interaction of these gamma-rays with atoms in the Earth's atmosphere. Beyond that, the workshop encompassed the latest developments and trends in theory and observation of cosmic gamma-ray sources of all energies, from nuclear gamma-ray lines in the MeV-region, through the Bremsstrahlung, Inverse Compton, and pion decay continuum emission, to gamma-rays due the decay of exotic relics from the early Universe. Audience: Specialists as well as students in physics and astrophysics and young research workers.

Long used in undergraduate and introductory graduate courses, Astrophysical Techniques, Sixth Edition provides a comprehensive account of the instruments, detectors, and techniques employed in astronomy and astrophysics. Emphasizing the underlying unity of all astronomical observations, this popular text provides a coherent state-of-the-art account of the instruments and techniques used in current astronomy and astrophysics. As in earlier editions, the author aims to reduce the trend towards fragmentation of astronomical studies. The underlying unity of all of astronomical observation is emphasized by the layout of the book: the pattern of detection → imaging → ancillary techniques has been adopted so that one stage of an observation is encountered together with the similar stages required for all other information carriers. The book is written in a very accessible manner, and most of the mathematics is accessible to those who have attended a mathematics course in their final years at school. Nevertheless, the treatment of the topics in general is at a sufficiently high level to be of use to those professionals seeking technical information in areas of astronomy with which they might not be completely familiar.

An almost complete collection of the papers given at the International Workshop on Imaging in High Energy Astronomy (Anacapri, Italy, 1994). These proceedings, which concentrate on imaging above 10 keV, represent the state of the art in the field, resulting from the success of many missions (I.C. Granat and CGRO) carrying detectors for high energy astronomy with imaging capabilities. The main topics of the book are Bragg concentrators, coded mask-modulation collimators, double Compton telescopes, the occultation method, tracking chambers, and new experimental techniques. The book also contains some papers dealing with image reconstruction and processing, with an emphasis on the above techniques.