The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

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Giuseppina (Pepi) Fabbiano

Center for Astrophysics

Senior Astrophysicist

Giuseppina (Pepi) Fabbiano

gfabbiano@cfa.harvard.edu

About

Scientific interests include the study of normal galaxies, their evolution, and the galaxy-nuclear activity connection, by means of X-ray observations. Fabbiano has published a number of highly cited research and review papers in this subject, including two invited articles for the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She has been involved in observational X-ray astronomy (with Uhuru, HEA-1, ROSAT, Einstein, Chandra) and space data management throughout her career, and is presently the Head of the Data Systems Division of the Chandra X-ray Center. Her group has developed the new Chandra Source Catalog, which gives access to the X-ray sources detected with Chandra and all their relevant data from derived properties to the original data cubes and calibrations. She is the CfA lead for the Virtual Observatory, a project aimed at making astronomical data archives inter-operable and accessible to the wider public. She has long been an advocate of high resolution, large collecting area X-ray telescopes. She has served on several national and international committees, including chairing the executive committee of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, and is a member and Trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics.

Physics Doctorate, 1973, Palermo University (Italy)

Telescopes and Instruments

Einstein Observatory

NASA’s Einstein Observatory was the first X-ray space telescope designed to produce images of astronomical X-ray sources. The spacecraft operated from 1978 through 1981, providing important observations of pulsars, supernova remnants, supermassive black holes in other galaxies, and many more, paving the way for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray telescope was designed by researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

Chandra

The Chandra X-ray Observatory is NASA’s flagship X-ray observatory, providing essential data on everything from the environment surrounding newborn stars to the emissions from hot plasma inside galaxy clusters. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), as part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, manages Chandra’s day-to-day operations, providing spacecraft control, observation planning, and data processing for astronomers. Chandra is one of NASA’s orbiting Great Observatories, along with the Hubble.

Visit the Chandra Website

Lynx X-Ray Observatory

The Lynx X-ray Observatory is a proposed X-ray space telescope, designed to be the next generation following NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency’s upcoming Athena Telescope. This observatory will be able to take images of a larger area of the sky in X-ray light with better resolution than any existing telescope, allowing astronomers to study the first supermassive black holes, the hot gas surrounding galaxies as they evolve, and radiation from the earliest stars. Researchers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and other universities are presenting Lynx to NASA for consideration in the 2020 Decadal Survey, with a proposed launch date in the mid-2030s.

Visit the Lynx X-Ray Observatory Website

Uhuru

The Uhuru X-ray Explorer Satellite was the first spacecraft dedicated to X-ray astronomy. During its mission in the early 1970s, Uhuru mapped the X-ray sky. It provided the first observational evidence for black holes, revealed that galaxy clusters contain hot X-ray-emitting gas, and charted the behavior of neutron stars in binary systems. The observatory was named Uhuru, the Swahili word meaning “freedom”, in honor of Kenyan independence and because the rocket carrying the spacecraft was launched into orbit from a site off the coast of Kenya near Mombasa. The success of the Uhuru satellite led the way for all subsequent space telescopes, from the Einstein Observatory to NASA’s flagship Chandra X-ray Observatory.