Science with the AstroSat Soft X-ray telescope: An overview

The Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) aboard the AstroSat satellite is the first Indian X-ray telescope in space. It is a modest size X-ray telescope with a charge coupled device (CCD) camera in the focal plane, which provides X-ray images in the $$\sim $$ 0.3–8.0 keV band. A forte of SXT is in providing undistorted spectra of relatively bright X-ray sources, in which it excels over some current large CCD-based X-ray telescopes. Here, we highlight some of the published spectral and timing results obtained using the SXT data to demonstrate the capabilities and overall performance of this telescope.