Talk:ROSAT

PSPC detail
Any problems with coincident photons within a refractory period ? How many wires in each PSPC grid ? - Rod57 (talk) 08:43, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

The instrument clocks were pretty good so for most sources this (coincident photons) was not a concern - unlike Chandra/ACIS where photon pileup is a continual problem, we never worried about it much on ROSAT. According to Appendix F (NASA's ROSAT observers guide) the dead time was 0.3ms and the background-dominated count rate was up to 100 cts/s so the dead time correction was about 3 percent, this was applied statistically as a header keyword value (so you just multiply the actual exposure time by 0.97 or so to get the 'livetime'). I don't know about the number of wires but the position resolution was quoted as 0.3mm across an 80mm diameter aperture. This corresponded to about half an arcminute on the sky which was a big step up on the predecessor Einstein IPC instrument though much worse than HRI of course. JonathanMcDowell (talk) 03:11, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Atmospheric entry
Hello. According to twitter, Rosat is supposed to reenter the Earth's atmosphere on Oct. 23, 2011.

http://twitter.com/#!/ROSAT_Reentry

thanks... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.60.109.109 (talk) 18:14, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

extreme ultraviolet (XUV) telescope
This passage is incomplete and faulty: "In addition, a British-supplied extreme ultraviolet (XUV) telescope, the Wide Field Camera (WFC), was coaligned with the XRT and covers the wave band between and 6 angstroms (0.042 to 0.21 keV)." Clearly a number is missing after "between". 0.21 keV corresponds to 60 angstroms (6 nm) while 0.042 keV is 300 angstroms (30 nm), since energy of a photon in keV = 12.3984 / wavelength in angstrom. Most likely it should have read "...wave band between 300 and 60 angstroms (0.042 to 0.21 keV)." Joewein (talk) 11:38, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a direct quote from the source, which is also missing the number, so it can't be corrected. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:05, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * What is the source, so that the proper data can be obtained from its author? Joewein (talk) 23:39, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The source is provided as a citation at the end of the quoted section. It's a NASA page. This is a direct link. --AussieLegend (talk) 12:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I contacted NASA and they replied after correcting the text on their site. I have merged their update into the article. Joewein (talk) 03:29, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense fringe theories
Can we please remove the crap about the satellite being sabotaged. It was a German satellite which NASA had absolutely no control over, so there is no way that anybody hacking into NASA computers could have affected it. Furthermore it was already well past the end of its design life when the accident happened. See this. -- G W … 00:12, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Hear hear. GW cites my newsletter; I talked to Rob Petre (ROSAT US manager) and Steve Murray (HRI designer) as well as an email exchange with Tom Talleur who wrote the original sabotage suggestion that's being cited (although he says the actual research was done by subordinates). It's clear that there is no basis for this story. (and I'm damn skeptical about this week's stories about hacking attempts on Terra and Landsat-7 but that's another story). It belongs if anywhere in an article on 'spurious claims of hacking used to scaremonger and justify increased computer security budgets'. Delete it from the ROSAT article please. JonathanMcDowell (talk) 03:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Just which claims here are "crap" ? These claims were reported in some very reputable sources. We report that they were reported, we don't claim that they were necessarily true.
 * If you have reason to disbelieve these claims, then please refute them - although doing this encyclopedically means recording their refutation, not just blindly deleting it. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:19, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I have refuted them. The source for the sabotage story is Tailleur's intern who  Tailluer claims got it from ROSAT folks at Goddard. Petre at Goddard was the lead scientist involved in the mission and confirmed to me directly that the story is completely incorrect. Other Goddard ROSAT team members I have discussed it with find it laughable. When the people running the mission say it didn't happen and the only source is an unnamed intern whose original notes appear no longer to exist, there is no justification for retaining this story. JonathanMcDowell  (talk) 15:30, 4 Nov 2020 (UTC)

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