Future Space-based Gamma-ray Observatories

Febuary 5-6, 2015
Goddard Space Flight Center
Building 34, Room W150

The medium energy γ-ray band accessible from space contains a wealth of scientific promise from the study of γ-ray bursts and active galaxies, dark matter annihilation and decay, particle acceleration and cosmicray production in Galactic and extragalactic sources, cosmic-ray interactions in the Milky Way, rotation powered pulsars and magnetars, acceleration processes in the Sun and more. Our appetite for this science has been whetted by many recent exciting results from Fermi (at higher energies) and NuSTAR (at lower energies) and is based on studies of the MeV sky by CGRO/COMPTEL and INTEGRAL. Progress in this exciting field has been limited largely by the challenges of building sufficiently capable instruments to detect these γ rays as they interact by Compton scattering and pair production. The detailed scientific questions within these areas are addressed by a range of different performance optimizations such as flux and polarization sensitivity, angular and energy resolution, photon counting statistics, background rejection, and field of view. Different technical and hardware approaches result in different optimization of these performance parameters.

We will meet February 5-6 at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD to discuss the Science Drivers for a new space-based gamma-ray experiment, and technologies and instruments concepts for a new gamma-ray mission.

Registration and Abstracts Submission

The registration and abstract deadline is January 15, 2015. Please register as early as possible so that we can request visitor badges for attendees. A small contribution for meeting refreshments will be collected onsite.

Organizing Committee

Julie McEnery
Marco Ajello
Bill Atwood
Steve Boggs
Jim Buckley
Regina Caputo
Eric Charles
Elizabeth Hays
John Mitchell
Mark McConnell
Jeremy Perkins