The year 2019 will be remembered among high energy astrophysicists as a year of anniversaries, marking the 20th anniversaries of the launch of the
Chandra X-ray Observatory and
XMM-Newton, two large space observatories which have revolutionized our view of the X-ray Universe. The past year was also the
50th anniversary of the establishment of the
High Energy Astrophysics Division of the
American Astronomical Society. The HEAD, as it's affectionately known, helps promote and advance research into high-energy phenomena, radiative, particulate, and gravitational. On the science front, NASA's NICER observatory re-wrote the textbook on
what magnetic fields on neutron stars look like, and provided the best estimate of a neutron star's density yet obtained by any X-ray observatory. And for an encore, it also demonstrated
navigation using X-ray pulsars as celestial lighthouses. Another epochal event was the
launch of the Spektr-RG observatory, carrying aboard the
eROSITA and
ART-XC X-ray telescopes, which provide deep, high-definition observations of the entire X-ray sky from the Sun-Earth L2 point, some million miles away from Earth. This year also witnessed some
extremely high energy events as well, using telescopes like
MAGIC. On the development front, major milestones were reached by extraordinary new facilities like
IXPE and
Athena, two observatories which will extend our view of the high energy Universe and which will undoubtedly reveal startling new, unexpected, unpredicted phenomena. We can only wonder what astounding new discoveries will be made in the upcoming decade. Foresight is 2020.
HEAPOW: 2019 Hindsight (2019 Dec 30)