Most galactic nuclei are now believed to harbour supermassive black holes 1 . Studies of stellar motions in the central few light-years of our Milky Way Galaxy indicate the presence of a dark object with a mass of ≈ 2.6 × 10 6 solar masses (refs 2, 3). This object is spatially coincident with Sagittarius A * (Sgr A * ), the unique compact radio source located at the dynamical centre of our Galaxy. By analogy with distant quasars and nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN), Sgr A * is thought to be powered by the gravitational potential energy released by matter as it accretes onto a supermassive black hole 4, 5 . However, Sgr A * is much fainter than expected in all wavebands, especially in X-rays, casting some doubt on this model. Recently, we reported the first strong evidence of X-ray emission from Sgr A * (ref. 6). Here we report the discovery of rapid X-ray flaring from the direction of Sgr A * . These data provide compelling evidence that the X-ray emission is coming from accretion onto a supermassive black hole at the Galactic Centre, and the nature of the variations provides strong constraints on the astrophysical processes near the event horizon of the black hole.Our view of Sgr A * in the optical and ultraviolet wavebands is blocked by the large visual extinction, AV ≈ 30 magnitudes 7 , caused by dust and gas along the line of sight. Sgr A * has not been detected in the infrared due to its faintness and to the bright infrared background from stars and clouds of dust 8 . Detection of X-rays from Sgr A * is therefore essential to constrain the spectrum at energies above the radio-tosubmillimetre band and to test the supermassive-black-hole accretion-flow paradigm 5 .We first observed the Galactic Centre on 21 September 1999 with the imaging array of the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS-I) aboard the Chandra X-ray Observatory 9 and discovered an X-ray source coincident within 0. 35 ± 0. 26 (1σ) of the radio source 6 . The luminosity in 1999 was very weak, LX ≈ 2 × 10 33 erg s −1 in the 2-10 keV band, after correction for the inferred neutral hydrogen absorption column NH ≈ 1 × 10 23 cm −2 . This is far fainter than previous X-ray observatories could detect 6 .We observed the Galactic Centre a second time with Chandra/ACIS-I from

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Prepared by the LSST Science Collaborations, with contributions from the LSST Project. PrefaceMajor advances in our understanding of the Universe over the history of astronomy have often arisen from dramatic improvements in our ability to observe the sky to greater depth, in previously unexplored wavebands, with higher precision, or with improved spatial, spectral, or temporal resolution. Aided by rapid progress in information technology, current sky surveys are again changing the way we view and study the Universe, and the next-generation instruments, and the surveys that will be made with them, will maintain this revolutionary progress. Substantial progress in the important scientific problems of the next decade (determining the nature of dark energy and dark matter, studying the evolution of galaxies and the structure of our own Milky Way, opening up the time domain to discover faint variable objects, and mapping both the inner and outer Solar System) all require wide-field repeated deep imaging of the sky in optical bands.The wide-fast-deep science requirement leads to a single wide-field telescope and camera which can repeatedly survey the sky with deep short exposures. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), a dedicated telecope with an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and a field of view of 9.6 deg 2 , will make major contributions to all these scientific areas and more. It will carry out a survey of 20,000 deg 2 of the sky in six broad photometric bands, imaging each region of sky roughly 2000 times (1000 pairs of back-to-back 15-sec exposures) over a ten-year survey lifetime.The LSST project will deliver fully calibrated survey data to the United States scientific community and the public with no proprietary period. Near real-time alerts for transients will also be provided worldwide. A goal is worldwide participation in all data products. The survey will enable comprehensive exploration of the Solar System beyond the Kuiper Belt, new understanding of the structure of our Galaxy and that of the Local Group, and vast opportunities in cosmology and galaxy evolution using data for billions of distant galaxies. Since many of these science programs will involve the use of the world's largest non-proprietary database, a key goal is maximizing the usability of the data. Experience with previous surveys is that often their most exciting scientific results were unanticipated at the time that the survey was designed; we fully expect this to be the case for the LSST as well.The purpose of this Science Book is to examine and document in detail science goals, opportunities, and capabilities that will be provided by the LSST. The book addresses key questions that will be confronted by the LSST survey, and it poses new questions to be addressed by future study. It contains previously available material (including a number of White Papers submitted to the ASTRO2010 Decadal Survey) as well as new results from a year-long campaign of study and evaluation. This book does not attempt to be complete; there are many ...

Utilizing 21 new Chandra observations as well as archival Chandra, ROSAT, and XMM-Newton data, we study the X-ray properties of a representative sample of 59 of the most optically luminous quasars in the Universe (M i ≈ −29.3 to −30.2) spanning a redshift range of z ≈ 1.5-4.5. Our full sample consists of 32 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 3 (DR3) quasar catalog, two additional objects in the DR3 area that were missed by the SDSS selection criteria, and 25 comparably luminous quasars at z > ∼ 4. This is the largest X-ray study of such luminous quasars to date. By jointly fitting the X-ray spectra of our sample quasars, excluding radio-loud and broad absorption line (BAL) objects, we find a mean X-ray powerlaw photon index of Γ = 1.92 +0.09 −0.08 and constrain any neutral intrinsic absorbing material to have a mean column density of N H < ∼ 2 × 10 21 cm −2 . We find, consistent with other studies, that Γ does not change with redshift, and we constrain the amount of allowed Γ evolution for the most-luminous quasars. Our sample, excluding radio-loud and BAL quasars, has a mean X-ray-to-optical spectral slope of α ox = −1.80 ± 0.02, as well as no significant evolution of α ox with redshift. We also comment upon the X-ray properties of a number of notable quasars, including an X-ray weak quasar with several strong narrow absorption-line systems, a mildly radio-loud BAL quasar, and a well-studied gravitationally lensed quasar. FIG. 1.-Absolute i-band magnitude vs. redshift for our SDSS sample compared with the SDSS DR3 quasar catalog. Our SDSS sample of 32 quasars includes both archival (open symbols) and targeted (filled symbols) sources with Chandra (circles), XMM-Newton (triangles), and ROSAT (squares) observations. The two additional sources that were missed by the SDSS (APM 08279+5255 and HS 1603+3820; see §2.1.2) are shown as stars. The gravitationally lensed quasars APM 08279+5255, SDSS J0145−0945, and SDSS J0813+2545 have been de-amplified to their true M i magnitudes and have bold symbols for clarity; all fail our cutoff at M i < −29.28, which is shown as a dashed line. SDSS J1007+0532, which has been targeted by S. F. Anderson and thus needed to be removed from our sample (see §2.1.1), is shown as an open diamond. Small dots represent the ≈ 46,000 quasars in the DR3 catalog.

We present point-source catalogs for the %2 Ms exposure of the Chandra Deep Field North, currently the deepest X-ray observation of the universe in the 0.5-8.0 keV band. Five hundred and three (503) X-ray sources are detected over an %448 arcmin 2 area in up to seven X-ray bands. Twenty (20) of these X-ray sources lie in the central %5.3 arcmin 2 Hubble Deep Field North (13; 600 þ3800 À3000 sources deg À2 ). The on-axis sensitivity limits are %2.5 Â 10 À17 ergs cm À2 s À1 (0.5-2.0 keV) and %1.4 Â 10 À16 ergs cm À2 s À1 (2-8 keV). Source positions are determined using matched-filter and centroiding techniques; the median positional uncertainty is %0>3. The X-ray colors of the detected sources indicate a broad variety of source types, although absorbed AGNs (including a small number of possible Compton-thick sources) are clearly the dominant type. We also match lower significance X-ray sources to optical counterparts and provide a list of 79 optically bright (R d 23) lower significance Chandra sources. The majority of these sources appear to be starburst and normal galaxies. The average backgrounds in the 0.5-2.0 keV and 2-8 keV bands are 0.056 and 0.135 counts Ms À1 pixel À1 , respectively. The background count distributions are very similar to Poisson distributions. We show that this %2 Ms exposure is approximately photon limited in all seven X-ray bands for regions close to the aim point, and we predict that exposures up to %25 Ms (0.5-2.0 keV) and %4 Ms (2-8 keV) should remain nearly photon limited. We demonstrate that this observation does not suffer from source confusion within %6 0 of the aim point, and future observations are unlikely to be source-confusion limited within %3 0 of the aim point even for source densities exceeding 100,000 deg À2 . These analyses directly show that Chandra can achieve significantly higher sensitivities in an efficient, nearly photon-limited manner and be largely free of source confusion. To allow consistent comparisons, we have also produced pointsource catalogs for the %1 Ms Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S). Three hundred and twenty-six (326) X-ray sources are included in the main Chandra catalog, and an additional 42 optically bright X-ray sources are included in a lower significance Chandra catalog. We find good agreement with the photometry of the previously published CDF-S catalogs; however, we provide significantly improved positional accuracy.

We report the discovery of X-ray broad absorption lines (BALs) from the BALQSO APM 08279+5255 originating from material moving at relativistic velocities with respect to the central source. The large flux magnification by a factor of ∼ 100 provided by the gravitational lens effect combined with the large redshift (z = 3.91) of the quasar have facilitated the acquisition of the first high signal-to-noise X-ray spectrum of a quasar containing Xray BALs. Our analysis of the X-ray spectrum of APM 08279+5255 places the rest-frame energies of the two observed absorption lines at 8.1 and 9.8 keV. The detection of each of these lines is significant at the > 99.9% confidence level based on the F-test. Assuming that the absorption lines are from Fe XXV Kα, the implied bulk velocities of the X-ray BALs are ∼ 0.2c and ∼ 0.4c, respectively. The observed high bulk velocities of the X-ray BALs combined with the relatively short recombination time-scales of the X-ray absorbing gas imply that the absorbers responsible for the X-ray BALs are located at radii of < ∼ 2 × 10 17 cm, within the expected location of the UV absorber. With this implied geometry the X-ray gas could provide the necessary shielding to prevent the UV absorber from being completely ionized by the central X-ray source, consistent with hydrodynamical simulations of line-driven disk winds. Estimated mass-outflow rates for the gas creating the X-ray BALs are typically less than a solar mass per year. Our spectral analysis also indicates that the continuum X-ray emission of APM 08279+5255 is consistent with that of a typical radio-quiet quasar with a spectral slope of Γ = 1.72 +0.06 −0.05 .

The high-resolution X-ray spectrum of NGC 3783 shows several dozen absorption lines and a few emission lines from the H-like and He-like ions of O, Ne, Mg, Si, and S as well as from Fe XVII-Fe XXIII L-shell transitions. We have reanalyzed the Chandra HETGS spectrum using better flux and wavelength calibrations along with more robust methods. Combining several lines from each element, we clearly demonstrate the existence of the absorption lines and determine they are blueshifted relative to the systemic velocity by −610 ± 130 km s −1 . We find the Ne absorption lines in the High Energy Grating spectrum to be resolved with FWHM = 840 +490 −360 km s −1 ; no other lines are resolved. The emission lines are consistent with being at the systemic velocity. We have used regions in the spectrum where no lines are expected to determine the X-ray continuum, and we model the absorption and emission lines using photoionized-plasma calculations. The model consists of two absorption components, with different covering factors, which have an order of magnitude difference in their ionization parameters. The two components are spherically outflowing from the AGN and thus contribute to both the absorption and the emission via P Cygni profiles. The model also clearly requires O VII and O VIII absorption edges. The low-ionization component of our model can plausibly produce UV absorption lines with equivalent widths consistent with those observed from NGC 3783. However, we note that this result is highly sensitive to the unobservable UV-to-X-ray continuum, and the available UV and X-ray observations cannot firmly establish the relationship between the UV and X-ray absorbers. We find good agreement between the Chandra spectrum and simultaneous ASCA and RXTE observations. The 1 keV deficit previously found when modeling ASCA data probably arises from iron L-shell absorption lines not included in previous models. We also set an upper limit on the FWHM of the narrow Fe Kα emission line of 3250 km s −1 . This is consistent with this line originating outside the broad line region, possibly from a torus.

We use gravitational microlensing of the four images of the z = 0.658 quasar RXJ 1131-1231 to measure the sizes of the optical and X-ray emission regions of the quasar. The (face-on) scale length of the optical disk at rest frame 400nm is R λ,O = 1.3 × 10 15 cm, while the half-light radius of the rest frame 0.3-17 keV X-ray emission is R 1/2,X = 2.3 × 10 14 cm. The formal uncertainties are factors of 1.6 and 2.0, respectively. With the exception of the lower limit on the X-ray size, the results are very stable against any changes in the priors used in the analysis. Based on the Hβ line-width, we estimate that the black hole mass is M 1131 ≃ 10 8 M ⊙ , which corresponds to a gravitational radius of r g ≃ 2 × 10 13 cm. Thus, the X-ray emission is emerging on scales of ∼ 10r g and the 400 nm emission on scales of ∼ 70r g . A standard thin disk of this size should be significantly brighter than observed. Possible solutions are to have a flatter temperature profile or to scatter a large fraction of the optical flux on larger scales after it is emitted. While our calculations were not optimized to constrain the dark matter fraction in the lens galaxy, dark matter dominated models are favored. With well-sampled optical and X-ray light curves over a broad range of frequencies there will be no difficulty in extending our analysis to completely map the structure of the accretion disk as a function of wavelength. 98105 7 Using the Bentz et al. (2006) mass normalizations. For the Kaspi et al. (2005) normalization we obtain M 1131 = (6.9 ± 1.6) × 10 7 M ⊙ , which is consistent with the earlier estimate of Peng et al. (2006) of 6 × 10 7 M ⊙ also using the Kaspi et al. (2005) normalizations. We use the Peng et al. (2006) masses in Morgan et al. (2009) because we lacked spectra for the full sample of objects.