Together with many colleagues, I have contributed to a White Paper on a possible X-ray Interferometry mission. This project is led by Phil Uttley from the University of Amsterdam, and we hope to be considered for ESA’s Vision 2050 mission slot. X-ray interferometry can yield amazing spatial resolution for bright X-ray sources, even though there is still quite some technology to be developed. For stars and exoplanets, we could spatially resolve transits in front of the stellar corona – see the conceptual image I made for the White Paper.

“The high energy universe at ultra-high resolution: the power and promise of X-ray interferometry “, P. Uttley and 26 co-authors including K. Poppenhaeger, A White Paper submitted in response to ESA’s Voyage 2050 call, arXiv 1908.03144 (2019).