Kurtis L. Dietz

TL;DR: HERO as mentioned in this paper is a balloon-borne hard-x-ray telescope that utilizes grazing incidence optics, which can provide unprecented sensitivity in the hard x-ray region and will achieve milliCrab-level sensitivity in a typical 3-hour balloon-flight observation and 50 microCrab sensitivity on ultra-long-duration flights.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed high-energy grazing-incidence replicated optics for a balloon-borne hard-x-ray telescope, which will have 170 cm2 of effective collecting area at 40 keV and 130 square cm at 60 keV with <= 30 arc seconds half power diameter.

TL;DR: The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) as discussed by the authors is a NASA Small Explorer mission in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), which will open a new window of investigation by imaging x-ray polarimetry.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors report the results of an investigation into the nature of background events in proportional counters sensitive to X-ray photons having energy > 0, and show that the background events can be represented by a Gaussian distribution.

TL;DR: HERO as discussed by the authors is a balloon payload featuring shallow-graze angle replicated optics for hard-x-ray imaging, which is a proof-of-concept flight captured the first hard-X-ray focused images of the Crab Nebula, Cygnus X-1 and GRS 1915+105.