Imaging high-energy astrophysical sources using Earth occultation

Details Imaging high-energy astrophysical sources using Earth occultation Imaging high-energy astrophysical sources using Earth occultation

Nov 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993natur.366..245z&link_type=abstract

Nature, Volume 366, Issue 6452, pp. 245-247 (1993).

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

44

Scientific paper

HIGH-ENERGY astrophysical sources can be difficult to image. Photons with energies above ~5 keV are hard to focus, so experiments usually employ coded masks1-4 or moving collimators5-9 to modulate the flux received by the detectors; the resulting signals are then deconvolved to form the images. Here we demonstrate a new approach which makes use of the large-area, non-collimated detectors of the Burst and Transient Source Experiment on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. As the spacecraft moves in its orbit, the Earth itself acts as a stable occulting disk. Changes in the measured signal during a single occultation correspond to the integrated intensity of sources positioned along the arc described by the Earth's edge (limb). The low-altitude, moderately inclined orbit of the spacecraft ensures that the angle at which the limb traverses a source region varies between occultations, and thus data from a series of occultations can be transformed into an image. This imaging process is conceptually and mathematically similar to those used in fan-beam aperture-synthesis radio-astronomy10 and medical computer-assisted tomography11, and holds great promise for all-sky imaging with relatively simple (and hence inexpensive) detectors.

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