X-ray astronomy project photos

Paul Vanden Bout writes, "From 1967-70 I was at Columbia U., first as a postdoc and then as an Asst. Prof. Roger Angel and I shared an office. We were both in Robert Novick’s research group, working on x-ray astronomy projects. These slides are of the launch of Angel’s payload, an x-ray polarimeter. The launch was successful and he got a measure of the polarization of x-rays emitted by the Crab Nebula. The experiment was the idea of Lo Woltjer, chairman of the Columbia Astronomy Department. Slide 9 was taken from a helicopter carrying Angel and me to search for the payload which had parachuted back to earth. We found it, somewhat damaged, as the wind had dragged it around in the desert before we got to it. Large rattlesnake objected to the recovery operation."

Papers of Paul A. Vanden Bout

NRAO/AUI/NSF

Still Image

PVB-rocket-xray-may69-9.jpg

Slide

1969-05

Contact Archivist for photo credit information.

See also 19 8x10 color prints of the launch experiment.

Photographs Series