A magnetar giant flare in the nearby starburst galaxy M82.

Magnetar giant flares are rare explosive events releasing up to 10 erg in gamma rays in less than 1 second from young neutron stars with magnetic fields up to 10 G (refs. ). Only three such flares have been seen from magnetars in our Galaxy and in the Large Magellanic Cloud in roughly 50 years.

Thermalization of Mesh Reinforced Ultra-Thin Al-Coated Plastic Films: A Parametric Study Applied to the Athena X-IFU Instrument.

The X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) is one of the two focal plane detectors of Athena, a large-class high energy astrophysics space mission approved by ESA in the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Science Program. The X-IFU consists of a large array of transition edge sensor micro-calorimeters that operate at ~100 mK inside a sophisticated cryostat. To prevent molecular contamination and to minimize photon shot noise on the sensitive X-IFU cryogenic detector array, a set of thermal filters (THFs) operating at different temperatures are needed.

Two giant outbursts of V0332+53 observed with INTEGRAL.

Context: In July 2015, the high-mass X-ray binary V0332+53 underwent a giant outburst, a decade after the previous one. V0332+53 hosts a strongly magnetized neutron star. During the 2004-2005 outburst, an anti-correlation between the centroid energy of its fundamental cyclotron resonance scattering features (CRSFs) and the X-ray luminosity was observed.