Peter Maksym attended the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society on 1/10/24, to present preliminary results for a collaboration that he is leading that uses Chandra X-ray observations to study a new deep survey field at the North Ecliptic Pole. The James Webb Space Telescope North Ecliptic Pole Time Domain Field (JWST NEP-TDF) is a JWST Guaranteed Time Observer survey field led by Rogier Windhorst at Arizona State University.
Since the NEP-TDF is in a low-obscuration region in the JWST continuous viewing zone, it is optimally suited for deep repeated observations to study variable phenomena, and is expected to be one of the deepest survey fields by the end of JWST’s mission. 1.8 megaseconds (approximately three weeks) of Chandra exposure have been gradually accumulated since 2018 by Maksym’s team, with the last currently-approved observations completed just this past December. This is now the third-deepest Chandra blank field, and a major investment for that observatory. These data are expected to contribute to extragalactic studies of supermassive black hole evolution and energetic astrophysical phenomena, studies only possible through the combination of the complementary sensitivity and angular resolution of Chandra in X-rays and JWST in the infrared.
