Observing Photons in Space

Dr. Arvind Parmar obtained his PhD in X-ray astronomy in 1981 from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University of London (UCL/MSSL). He joined ESA in 1982 as a duty scientist on the EXOSAT X-ray observatory before becoming the ESA study or project scientist for a number of high-energy astronomy missions. He then became the mission manager of the INTEGRAL and XMM-Newton space observatories. In 2009 he became Head of ESA's Astronomy Science Operations Division at ESAC near Madrid, Spain. Between 2012 and 2020 he was the ESA Coordinator for Astronomy and Fundamental Physics. From 2013 to 2020 he combined this position with being the Head of the ESA Science Support Office which is the home of ESA's Science Directorate study and project scientists and located in ESTEC, Noordwijk, the Netherlands. His research interests focus on accreting X-ray binaries, particularly those that exhibit irregular reductions in their X-ray emission due to intermittent obscuration by an accretion disk. He retired from ESA in 2020 and is currently the treasurer of the Royal Astronomical Society and an honorary professor at UCL/MSSL. He has 409 scientific publications of which 181 are peer reviewed.

Prof Dr. Jan-Willem den Herder is a program scientist at NWO-I/SRON the Netherlands Institute for Space Research. He is also connected to the Anton Pannekoek Institute of the University of Amsterdam where he lectures space instrumentation for high-energy astrophysics. His background in space research started with the Comptel instrument on GRO-COMPTON. Subsequently he was responsible for the calibrations and the delivery of the Reflection Grating Spectrometer on XMM-Newton (ESA's X-ray observatory which was launched in 1999 and is still operational) and he led the commissioning and in-flight calibration of the instrument. After that he led a Dutch-Swiss contribution to the Japanese Hitomi satellite (launched in 2016). Unfortunately, this mission was terminated after a few weeks but a re-flight (named XRISM) was launched successfully in 2023 and continues to provide unique scientific results. For this mission he was member of the 'External Science Advisory Panel'. He was co-Principal Investigator of the X-IFU instrument on Athena where NWO-I/SRON is responsible for the detection unit together with partners from the USA, Finland and Italy. The detector is a cryogenic micro-calorimeter providing high spectral capability with simultaneous imaging. In addition, he was a member of the executive committee of the EU infrastructure project AHEAD2020 and was chairman of the board of AHEAD2020. He is also member of the board of trustees of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Dr. Bernhard Fleck received his PhD in Physics in 1991 from the University of Würzburg, Germany. Joined ESA's Space Science Department at ESTEC in Noordwijk in 1993 to work on the SOHO project. Became the SOHO Project Scientist and Mission Manager in 1998. Between 2010 and 2014 he was also the ESA project scientist and mission manager for the Hinode and IRIS solar observatories. He is a co-I of SDO/AIA, SDO/HMI and IRIS. His research interests include the dynamics of the solar atmosphere, in particular wave propagation characteristics in the chromosphere. He is the author of nearly 100 refereed publications and a member of the Editorial Board of Living Reviews in Solar Physics.

Prof Matt Griffin is Head of the Astronomy Instrumentation Group at Cardiff University, UK. He studied Electrical Engineering at University College Dublin and Astrophysics at Queen Mary College London, receiving his PhD in 1985. His research work has included the development of instruments for both ground-based and space-borne observatories, and their use in the study of planetary atmospheres, star formation, galaxy evolution. He remained at Queen Mary until 2001 and was involved in various ground-based submillimetre instruments and in ESA's Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). Since 2001, he has been at Cardiff University. As well as participating in the SCUBA, SCUBA-2, and Planck-HFI instruments, he was the principal investigator for the SPIRE instrument on Herschel, for which he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's Jackson-Gwilt Medal in 2011. He is currently UK co-PI in the international consortium developing the scientific payload for ESA's Ariel mission to characterise the atmospheres of exoplanets. He is a Trustee of the Royal Astronomical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Learned Society of Wales. He has published 264 refereed papers with over 21,800 citations.

Dr. David Lumb obtained his PhD in X-ray astronomy in 1983 from the University of Leicester. He was a visiting fellow at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Boston, USA between 1984 and 1985. He was then employed as an Instrument Scientist for the JET-X mission development at Leicester University, UK, from 1986 to 1989. Between 1990 and 1994 he was the Programme Manager for Space Missions at Penn State University, USA. He joined ESA in 1994 as Instrument and Calibration Scientist for the XMM-Newton observatory. As a Technical Officer, he was responsible for numerous studies in the areas of detector development, high-energy optics and formation flying technologies etc. He then took on payload and study manager roles for the PLATO and Euclid mission studies. Finally, he became the study scientist for a number of high-energy astronomy mission proposals including LOFT, XIPE, IXO and Athena. In 2017 he retired from ESA and is currently a visiting researcher at the Open University, UK. He has published over 250 scientific papers which have received around 13,000 citations.

Dr. Anuschka Pauluhn currently works as a beamline scientist at the Swiss Light Source SLS of the Paul Scherrer Institut. She obtained her Dr.rer.nat. (PhD) in physics from Universität Hamburg in Germany where she worked at the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY). Her research activities also included data analysis in remote sensing for oceanography at Universtität Hamburg and JPL/NASA, Pasadena, USA, as well as data analysis and calibration projects for astrophysical, especially solar physics, related studies and instrumentation at the ETH Zürich, the Fachhochschule Bern and the International Space Science Institute ISSI, Bern. She has served as editor on several books and on public outreach journals for astrophysics and space science in general.

Prof Alan Smith was awarded a PhD at Leicester University in 1978 having flown a Skylark sounding rocket from Woomera, South Australia. Between 1984-1990 he was an astrophysicist and project manager at ESA after which he joined University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory (UCL/MSSL), becoming a professor in 1999, and where he became Director and Head of Department (2005-2017). He has also held the roles of: Director of UCL's Centre for Advanced Instrumentation Systems (1995-2005); Co-Director of the Smart Optics Faraday Partnership (2002-2005); founding Director of the Centre for Systems Engineering (1998-2017); Vice-Dean Enterprise for the faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (2007-2015), and Director of UCL's Space Domain (2017-2022). He is currently the UK instrument lead for the ESA exoplanet mission PLATO. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Association of Project Management. He has 155 publications of which 81 are in refereed journals.

In addition to the above editors, Prof Dr. Martin C.E. Huber , the lead editor of the 2nd edition, acted as an editorial advisor for the 3rd edition helping ensure continuity between the editions.