The Wide Field Imager Instrument for Athena

Understand

The WFI (Wide Field Imager) instrument is planned to be one of two complementary focal plane cameras on ESA's next X-ray observatory Athena.

• It combines unprecedented survey power through its large field of view of 40 amin x 40 amin together with excellent count rate capability (larger than 1 Crab).
• The energy resolution of the silicon sensor is state-of-the-art in the energy band of interest from 0.2 keV to 15 keV, e.g.
• the full width at half maximum of a line at 7 keV will be better than 170 eV until the end of the nominal mission phase.