Highlights from RXTE after 2.5 Years: Neutron-star Spins at KiloHertz Frequencies, Microquasars and More

Abstract

The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite was launched on 30 December 1995. It has made substantial contributions pertaining to compact objects and their environs. Broad-band spectral and short-time-scale temporal studies are exploring the effects of General Relativity in the regime of strong gravity. We present a brief outline of the principal contributions and then give a general overview of two new areas of x-ray astronomy that have proven by RXTE to be very fruitful: accreting neutron stars with millisecond spin periods and microquasars. The former pertains to the spin evolution of low-mass x-ray binaries and the equations of state of neutron stars while the latter is lends insight to disk-jet interactions in galactic black-hole binary systems.