N. Nelms

The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget Project

This paper reports on a new satellite sensor, the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) experiment. GERB is designed to make the first measurements of the Earths radiation budget from geostationary orbit. Measurements at high absolute accuracy of the reflected sunlight from the Earth, and the thermal radiation emitted by the Earth are made every 15 min, with a spatial resolution at the subsatellite point of 44.6 km (north–south) by 39.3 km (east–west). With knowledge of the incoming solar constant, this gives the primary forcing and response components of the top-of-atmosphere radiation. The first GERB instrument is an instrument of opportunity on Meteosat-8, a new spin-stabilized spacecraft platform also carrying the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared (SEVIRI) sensor, which is currently positioned over the equator at 3.5°W. This overview of the project includes a description of the instrument design and its preflight and in-flight calibration. An evaluation of the instrument performance after ...

Balmer α transitions in antiprotonic hydrogen and deuterium

Abstract The strong-interaction shifts ϵ and broadenings Γ of the 2p levels in antiprotonic hydrogen and deuterium have been measured for the first time with a crystal spectrometer. In hydrogen, the 2 3 P 0 hyperfine state could be resolved from the three close-lying states 2 3 P 2 , 2 1 P 1 , and 2 3 P 1 . The hadronic shift was determined to be ϵ 2 3 P 0 =+139±28 meV (attractive). The value found for Γ 2 3 P 0 =120±25 meV is much larger than the spin-averaged 2p-level broadening Γ bal 2p as determined from earlier experiments measuring the intensity balance. The average shift of the three unresolved states is consistent with zero and a mean broadening of Γ 2( 3 P 2 , 1 P 1 , 3 P 1 ) =38±9 meV was measured. In deuterium, the spin-averaged hadronic shift and broadening were found to be ϵ 2p =−243±26 meV (repulsive) and Γ 2p =489±30 meV.

A large area CCD X-ray detector for exotic atom spectroscopy

A large area, position and energy sensitive detector has been developed to study the characteristic X-radiation of exotic atoms in the few keV range. The detector, built up from an array of six high-resistivity CCDs, is used as the focal plane of a reflection-type crystal spectrometer. A large detection area is necessary because of the need to detect simultaneously two or more lines close in energy as well as broad structures like fluorescence X-rays from electronic atoms. The fine pixel structure provides accurate determination of the X-ray line position while the excellent background rejection capabilities of the CCD, using both energy and topographical discrimination, are essential in the high background environment of a particle accelerator.

Versatile high resolution crystal spectrometer with x-ray charge coupled device detector

A family of Johann configuration curved crystal spectrometers has been designed to share the basic engineering features of compactness, modularity, facility of alignment and focus, and incorporation of solid-state charge coupled device detector arrays. These detectors have intrinsically low noise, useful energy resolution, two-dimensional position sensitivity, and readout modes that are programmable. The spectrometers, although relatively compact, with a Rowland circle diameter in the range 0.5–2 m, can still have sufficient resolving power, dispersion, and throughput to be invaluable in high resolution studies of atomic and plasma sources. This article discusses the basic design features and performance of these doubly dispersive spectrometers and illustrates their versatility by applications to studies of a wide range of laboratory x-ray sources such as line emission from highly ionized atoms in the extended plasmas of Tokamaks and nearly point plasmas produced by focused laser irradiation of solids and...

Highly charged ions in exotic atoms research at PSI

During their de-excitation, exotic atoms formed in low pressure gases reach a state of high or even complete ionization. X-rays emitted from higher n-states of electron-free atoms have well defined energies with the error originating only from the error in the mass values of the constituent particles. They served as a basis for a new determination of the pion mass as well as for a high precision measurement of the pionic hydrogen ground state shift. The response function of the Bragg spectrometer has been determined with X-rays from completely ionized pionic carbon and with a dedicated electron cyclotron resonance ion trap (ECRIT). A further extension of the ECRIT method implemented in the experiment allows a direct calibration of exotic atom transitions as well as a precise determination of the energy of fluorescence lines.

Characterization of a charge-coupled device array for Bragg spectroscopy

The average pixel distance as well as the relative orientation of an array of 6 CCD detectors have been measured with accuracies of about 0.5 nm and 50

The geostationary Earth radiation budget (GERB) instrument on EUMETSAT's MSG satellite

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Precision measurements in pionic hydrogen

rad, respectively. Such a precision satisfies the needs of modern crystal spectroscopy experiments in the field of exotic atoms and highly charged ions. Two different measurements have been performed by illuminating masks in front of the detector array by remote sources of radiation. In one case, an aluminum mask was irradiated with X-rays and in a second attempt, a nanometric quartz wafer was illuminated by a light bulb. Both methods gave consistent results with a smaller error for the optical method. In addition, the thermal expansion of the CCD detectors was characterized between -105°C and -40°C.

Performance characteristics of the PAW instrumentation on Beagle 2 (the astrobiology lander on ESA's Mars Express Mission)

Abstract Geostationary Earth radiation budget (GERB) is an Announcement of Opportunity Instrument for EUMETSATs Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite. GERB will make accurate measurements of the Earth Radiation Budget from geostationary orbit, provide an absolute reference calibration for LEO Earth radiation budget instruments and allow studies of the energetics of atmospheric processes. By operating from geostationary orbit, measurements may be made many times a day, thereby providing essentially perfect diurnal sampling of the radiation balance between reflected and emitted radiance for that area of the globe within the field of view. GERB will thus complement other instruments which operate in low orbit and give complete global coverage, but with poor and biased time resolution. GERB measures infrared radiation in two wavelength bands: 0.32–4.0 and 0.32– 30 μm , with a pixel element size of 44 km at sub-satellite point. This paper gives an overview of the project and concentrates on the design and development of the instrument and ground testing and calibration, and lessons learnt from a short time scale low-budget project. The instrument was delivered for integration on the MSG platform in April 1999 ready for the proposed launch in October 2000, which has now been delayed probably to early 2002. The ground segment is being undertaken by RAL and RMIB and produces near real-time data for meteorological applications in conjunction with the main MSG imager—SEVERI. Climate research and other applications which are being developed under a EU Framework IV pilot project will be served by fully processed data. Because of the relevance of the observations to climate change, it is planned to maintain an operating instrument in orbit for at least 3.5 years. Two further GERB instruments are being built for subsequent launches of MSG.

Focal plane array for the GERB instrument

Abstract The strong interaction in the pion nucleon system leads to a shift and a broadening of the 1s-ground state in pionic hydrogen. These two quantities are being measured in an experiment at the Paul Scherrer Institute with much improved precision and allow an experimental test of recent calculations in the framework of Chiral Perturbation Theory. The experimental techniques using high resolution crystal spectroscopy are described as well as recent results.