Galactic SurveysA high sensitivity, coherent X-ray survey of selected regions of the Milky Way can provide crucial diagnostics in the quest to understand the structure and evolution of our Galaxy and its constituent parts. For example, such surveys open a new window on star formation in the Milky Way: with characteristic X-ray temperatures of 3 and 8 keV for O-star clusters and T Tauri emission respectively, X-rays from star forming regions, even through intervening absorbing column densities > 1022.5 cm-2, can be detected. Galactic surveys will provide a complete census of Supernova Remnants, are able to trace X-ray emission in compact binaries even from low luminosity sources and can generate large flux-limited samples of coronal sources (Warwick et al., private comm.) |