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First Peek of ASTRO-H Soft X-Ray Telescope (SXT) In-Orbit PerformanceASTRO-H (Hitomi) is a Japanese X-ray astrophysics satellite just launched in February, 2016, from Tanegashima, Japan by a JAXA's H-IIA launch vehicle. It has two Soft X-ray Telescopes (SXTs), among other instruments, that were developed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in collaboration with ISAS/JAXA and Nagoya University. One is for an X-ray micro-calorimeter instrument (Soft X-ray Spectrometer, SXS) and the other for an X-ray CCD camera (Soft X-ray Imager, SXI), both covering the X-ray energy band up to 15 keV. The two SXTs were fully characterized at the 30-m X-ray beam line at ISAS/JAXA. The combined SXT+SXS system effective area is about 250 and 300 cm(exp 2) at 1 and 6 keV, respectively, although observations were performed with the gate valve at the dewar entrance closed, which blocks most of low energy X-rays and some of high energy ones. The angular resolution for SXS is 1.2 arcmin (Half Power Diameter, HPD). The combined SXT+SXI system effective area is about 370 and 350 cm (exp 2) at 1 and 6 keV, respectively. The angular resolution for SXI is 1.3 arcmin (HPD). The both SXTs have a field of view of about 16 arcmin (FWHM of their vignetting functions).The SXT+SXS field of view is limited to 3 x 3 arcmin by the SXS array size. In-flight data available to the SXT team was limited at the time of this conference and a point-like source data is not available for the SXT+SXS. Although due to lack of attitude information we were unable to reconstruct a point spread function of SXT+SXI, according to RXJ1856.5-3754 data, the SXT seems to be working as expected in terms of imaging capability. As for the overall effective area response for both SXT+SXS and SXT+SXI, consistent spectral model fitting parameters with the previous measurements were obtained for Crab and G21.5-0.9 data. On the other hand, their 2-10 keV fluxes differ by about 20% at this point. Calibration work is still under progress. The SXT is the latest version of the aluminum foil X-ray mirror, which is extremely light-weight and very low cost, yet produces large effective area over a wide energy-band. Its area-mass ratio is the largest, 16 cm(exp 2)/kg, among ASTRO-H, Chandra, and XMM-Newton mirrors. The aluminum foil mirror is a still compelling technology depending on the mission science goal.
Document ID
20170006117
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Okajima, Takashi
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Soong, Yang
(Maryland Univ. College Park, MD, United States)
Serlemitsos, Peter J.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Mori, Hideyuki
(Maryland Univ. Baltimore County Baltimore, MD, United States)
Olsen, Lawrence
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Robinson, David
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Koenecke, Richard
(Adnet Systems, Inc. Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Chang, William
(Edge Space Systems Glenelg, MD, United States)
Hahne, David
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA United States)
Iisuka, Ryo
(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Kanagawa, Japan)
Ishida, Manabu
(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Kanagawa, Japan)
Maeda, Yoshitomo
(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Kanagawa, Japan)
Sato, Toshiki
(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Kanagawa, Japan)
Kikuchi, Naomichi
(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Kanagawa, Japan)
Kurashima, Sho
(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Kanagawa, Japan)
Nakaniwa, Nozomi
(Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Kanagawa, Japan)
Hayashi, Takayuki
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Ishibashi, Kazunori
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Miyazawa, Takuya
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Tachibana, Kenji
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Tamura, Keisuke
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Furuzawa, Akihiro
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Tawara, Yuzuru
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Sugita, Satoshi
(Tokyo Inst. of Tech. Tokyo, Japan)
Date Acquired
July 6, 2017
Publication Date
July 19, 2016
Publication Information
Publication: SPIE Proceedings
Publisher: SPIE
Volume: 9905
ISSN: 0277-786X
Subject Category
Astrophysics
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN43824
Meeting Information
Meeting: Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Location: Edinburgh
Country: United Kingdom
Start Date: June 26, 2016
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNG15CR64C
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNG12PL17C
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNG17PT01A
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
X-rays
X-ray telescope
Hitomi
ASTRO-H
X-ray optics
soft X-rays
X-ray mirror

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