Speaker
Dr
Mette Friis
(KTH)
Description
PoGO+ is a balloon-borne telescope studying the polarization of hard X-ray emission from the
Crab (pulsar and nebula) and Cygnus X-1 (an X-ray binary system). A successful one-week flight
was conducted during the summer of 2016, launching from the Esrange Space Center, Sweden,
and landing on Victoria Island, Canada. Observations of the two scientific targets were conducted
on each day of the flight, with peak altitudes in the excess of 40 km, and with a pointing stability
well within the 0.1 degree design requirement. PoGO+ is a successor to the PoGOLite Pathfinder,
which conducted its maiden flight in 2013.
Following a successful recovery of the payload, the scientific flight data has been analyzed,
providing polarimetric parameters (polarization fraction and polarization angle) for the Crab
system and Cygnus X-1. This presentation will briefly describe the PoGO+ instrument and the
2016 flight, along with observational results mainly for the Crab studies. An outlook to the
expected results for the Cygnus X-1 measurements will also be provided.
Primary author
Dr
Mózsi Kiss
(KTH Particle and Astroparticle Physics)
