First light for the HERMES space telescope on board SpIRIT

The University of Melbourne, the Italian Space Agency, Australian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics have announced the successful scientific operations of the HERMES Pathfinder space telescope instrument on board the SpIRIT satellite.

We are thrilled about this result and we are looking forward to the discovery and study of Gamma Ray Bursts from SpIRIT operations in conjunction with the six HERMES satellites to be launched next year by our international partners.

Figure 1: 10 min scan of the sky in the three energy bands 3-10 keV, 10-100 keVB and 100keV-2MeV. The modulation seen at low and medium energies is mainly due to partial Earth occultation of the Cosmic X-ray Background. The level of the background detected in the three energy bands is consistent with pre-flight estimates. Image & caption credits: HERMES consortium.