An All-sky Advanced X-ray Monitor (AXM) Mission

Abstract

A concept for an all-sky monitor mission substantially more powerful than the RXTE ASM is presented in brief. It makes use of 31 Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) proportional counters to provide continuous monitoring of the entire x-ray sky, except for earth occultations and a small region around the sun. This coverage would allow the study of a wide variety of short duration cosmic outbursts. At time scales longer than a few minutes, the sensitivity for the monitoring of x-ray sources (1.5 - 15 keV) would be greatly improved over the RXTE ASM, a factor of 6 in one day. This mission concept, the Advanced X-ray Monitor (AXM), is described in more detail in Remillard et al. (2000).