In-flight verification of the calibration and performance of the ASTRO-H (Hitomi) soft x-ray spectrometer
Date
2018Journal
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and SystemsPublisher
SPIEType
Article
Metadata
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The Soft X-ray Spectrometer onboard the Astro-H (Hitomi) orbiting x-ray observatory featured an array of 36 silicon thermistor x-ray calorimeters optimized to perform high spectral resolution x-ray imaging spectroscopy of astrophysical sources in the 0.3-To 12-keV band. Extensive preflight calibration measurements are the basis for our modeling of the pulse height-energy relation and energy resolution for each pixel and event grade, telescope collecting area, detector efficiency, and pulse arrival time. Because of the early termination of mission operations, we needed to extract the maximum information from observations performed only days into the mission when the onboard calibration sources had not yet been commissioned and the dewar was still coming into thermal equilibrium, so our technique for reconstructing the per-pixel time-dependent pulse height-energy relation had to be modified. The gain scale was reconstructed using a combination of an absolute energy scale calibration at a single time using a fiducial from an onboard radioactive source and calibration of a dominant time-dependent gain drift component using a dedicated calibration pixel, as well as a residual time-dependent variation using spectra from the Perseus cluster of galaxies. The energy resolution was also measured using the onboard radioactive sources. It is consistent with instrument-level measurements accounting for the modest increase in noise due to spacecraft systems interference. We use observations of two pulsar wind nebulae to validate our models of the telescope area and detector efficiency and to derive a more accurate value for the thickness of the gate-valve Be window, which had not been opened by the time mission operations ceased. We use observations of the Crab nebula to refine the pixel-To-pixel timing and validate the absolute timing. Copyright 2018 SPIE.Sponsors
Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the US DoE by LLNL under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344 and also supported by NASA grants to LLNL.Keyword
X-ray calorimeterIdentifier to cite or link to this item
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85044655414&doi=10.1117%2f1.JATIS.4.2.021407&partnerID=40&md5=9d7ee9efcaa0d0c4cdb4676d8dc499a4; http://hdl.handle.net/10713/9785ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1117/1.JATIS.4.2.021407