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Swift-BAT: The First Year of Gamma-Ray Burst DetectionsThe Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on the Swift has been detecting gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) since Dec. 17,2004 and automated burst alerts have been distributed since Feb. 14,2005. Since commissioning the BAT has triggered on more than 100 GRBs, nearly all of which have been followed up by the narrow-field instruments on Swift through automatic repointing, and by ground and other satellite telescopes after rapid notification. Within seconds of a trigger the BAT produces and relays to the ground a position good to three arc minutes and a four channel light curve. A full ten minutes of event data follows on subsequent ground station passes. The burst archive has allowed us to determine ensemble burst parameters such as fluence, peak flux and duration. An overview of the properties of BAT bursts and BAT'S performance as a burst monitor will be presented in this talk. BAT is a coded aperture imaging system with a wide (approx.2 sr) field of view consisting of a large coded mask located 1 m above a 5200 cm2 array of 32.768 CdZnTe detectors. All electronics and other hardware systems on the BAT have been operating well since commissioning and there is no sign of any degradation on orbit. The flight and ground software have proven similarly robust and allow the real time localization of all bursts and the rapid derivation of burst light curves, spectra and spectral fits on the ground.
Document ID
20060013256
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Krimm, Hans A.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2006
Subject Category
Astronomy
Meeting Information
Meeting: Amerian Astronomical Society Meeting
Location: Washington, DC
Country: United States
Start Date: January 9, 2006
End Date: January 12, 2006
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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