Implementing an all-sky x-ray camera on space station

Details Implementing an all-sky x-ray camera on space station Implementing an all-sky x-ray camera on space station

Jan 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999aipc..458..169p&link_type=abstract

Space technology and applications international forum -1999. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 458, pp. 169-169 (1999).

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X- And Gamma-Ray Telescopes And Instrumentation, Spaceborne And Space Research Instruments, Apparatus, And Components

Scientific paper

A pinhole camera is an elegant but effective approach to an x-ray all-sky monitor. It is an ideal astrophysical instrument for the Space Station, because it does not require pointing, is robust against contamination, and requires modest resources (120 kg, 50 Watts, 10 kpbs). Nonetheless, it would be more sensitive than any previous all-sky x-ray monitor. By continuously monitoring the entire unocculted sky, this instrument would be sensitive to changes at all timescales. Besides monitoring the brightest few hundred x-ray sources, including about a dozen active galactic nuclei, this instrument would be uniquely sensitive to fast transients, unlike any scanning instrument. We would expect to detect several hundred events per year with timescales from a minute to a day, and better understand their correlation with magnetic activity on nearby stars. We would also expect to detect about 50 gamma-ray bursts per year and locate them to 1 square degree, independently verifying the BATSE sky distribution. We discuss the issues involved in flying this instrument on the Space Station. These include the management of image data from a continuously scanning 2-dimensional field, autonomous determination of aspect using x-ray image data, the detection and exclusion of solar panel occultation from the data, the optimum integration of a very wide-field instrument onto an EXPRESS pallet, safety validation of already-built hardware, and thermal considerations for a very low-power instrument. We conclude that Space Station is an attractive platform to conduct wide-field x-ray astronomy.

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