Brief summary of the Spanish X-ray Astronomy Meeting: “the path towards Athena”

The Spanish X-ray astronomy community gathered together in Granada from 23rd to 25th of October 2017. The meeting was held at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA) and was sponsored by the Red de Infraestructuras de Astronomía (RIA). The conference was focussed in the Athena mission, the Spanish contribution to the project and the scientific synergies between Athena and other astronomical facilities (GTC, SKA, CTA, Gemini/OCTOCAM, and other future projects).

The meeting included nine invited talks dedicated to Athena, which will be available on this web portal under the Resources/Presentations menu. The first talk, given by Francisco Carrera (ACO lead), was a general presentation of the project. The WFI and X-IFU instruments were presented by Arne Rau (WFI Project Scientist) and Didier Barret (X-IFU Principal Investigator). While Giovanni Miniutti and Javier Gómez-Elvira talked about the Spanish scientific and technological contributions to the mission, respectively. The scientific synergies between Athena and other astronomical facilities were discussed in three talks by Iván Agudo, Romano Corradi and Antonio de Ugarte. The last invited talk by Silvia Martínez-Núñez (ACO manager) dealt with the Athena Community Office.

During this meeting, the Spanish X-ray astronomy community presented relevant scientific results in a wide range of topics, covering many scientific objectives of the Athena mission. As a general conclusion, the Spanish X-ray astronomy community is expecting to work with Athena, since as discussed in the meeting it will be a transformational observatory in many corners of the astrophysics.