Speaker
Description
The last 20 years have been studded with a wealth of unexpected results in high-energy astrophysics, as typified by discoveries made by Swift, INTEGRAL, and other high-energy observatories. Here we would like to highlight the major role played by Swift/XRT in supporting the INTEGRAL mission in consolidating new findings, allowing a better classification/characterisation of unknown sources, thanks to its few arcseconds source location accuracy, and studying known ones, thus paving the way to a better knowledge of the sky above 10 keV.
This has largely been due to the collaborative effort of the research teams involved in the two projects, but also to the foresight of Neil Gehrels, who before being the Swift PI, was mission scientist of INTEGRAL and thus the trade union for this successful collaboration. From source identification to broad-band spectral studies, from variability searches to source population analysis, XRT has always provided an extra element of understanding in the intricate path that has allowed a better knowledge of the INTEGRAL sky.
Few case studies, some overall statistics and future prospects will be presented to describe this 20-year-long journey.
