Satoshi Sugita

First peek of ASTRO-H Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) in-orbit performance

ASTRO-H (Hitomi) is a Japanese X-ray astrophysics satellite just launched in February, 2016, from Tanegashima, Japan by a JAXAs H-IIA launch vehicle. It has two Soft X-ray Telescopes (SXTs), among other instruments, that were developed by NASAs 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 beamline at ISAS/JAXA. The combined SXT+SXS system effective area is about 250 and 300 cm2 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 cm2 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 cm2/kg, among ASTRO-H, Chandra, and XMM-Newton mirrors. The aluminum foil mirror is a still compelling technology depending on the mission science goal.

In-flight verification of the calibration and performance of the ASTRO-H (Hitomi) Soft X-Ray Spectrometer

The Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS) onboard the Astro-H (Hitomi) orbiting x-ray observatory featured an array of 36 silicon thermistor x-ray calorimeters optimized to perform high spectral resolution x-ray imaging spectroscopy of astrophysical sources in the 0.3-12 keV band. Extensive pre- flight calibration measurements are the basis for our modeling of the pulse-height-energy relation and energy resolution for each pixel and event grade, telescope collecting area, detector efficiency, and pulse arrival time. Because of the early termination of mission operations, we needed to extract the maximum information from observations performed only days into the mission when the onboard calibration sources had not yet been commissioned and the dewar was still coming into thermal equilibrium, so our technique for reconstructing the per-pixel time-dependent pulse-height-energy relation had to be modified. The gain scale was reconstructed using a combination of an absolute energy scale calibration at a single time using a fiducial from an onboard radioactive source, and calibration of a dominant time-dependent gain drift component using a dedicated calibration pixel, as well as a residual time-dependent variation using spectra from the Perseus cluster of galaxies. The energy resolution was also measured using the onboard radioactive sources. It is consistent with instrument-level measurements accounting for the modest increase in noise due to spacecraft systems interference. We use observations of two pulsars to validate our models of the telescope area and detector efficiency, and to derive a more accurate value for the thickness of the gate valve Be window, which had not been opened by the time mission operations ceased. We use observations of the Crab pulsar to refine the pixel-to-pixel timing and validate the absolute timing.

In-orbit performance of the soft X-ray imaging system aboard Hitomi (ASTRO-H)

We describe the in-orbit performance of the soft X-ray imaging system consisting of the Soft X-ray Telescope and the Soft X-ray Imager aboard Hitomi. Verification and calibration of imaging and spectroscopic performance are carried out making the best use of the limited data of less than three weeks. Basic performance including a large field of view of 38x38 is verified with the first light image of the Perseus cluster of galaxies. Amongst the small number of observed targets, the on-minus-off pulse image for the out-of-time events of the Crab pulsar enables us to measure a half power diameter of the telescope as about 1.3. The average energy resolution measured with the onboard calibration source events at 5.89 keV is 179 pm 3 eV in full width at half maximum. Light leak and cross talk issues affected the effective exposure time and the effective area, respectively, because all the observations were performed before optimizing an observation schedule and parameters for the dark level calculation. Screening the data affected by these two issues, we measure the background level to be 5.6x10^{-6} counts s^{-1} arcmin^{-2} cm^{-2} in the energy band of 5-12 keV, which is seven times lower than that of the Suzaku XIS-BI.

Performance of ASTRO-H hard x-ray telescope (HXT)

The Japanese X-ray Astronomy Satellite, Hitomi (ASTRO-H) carries hard X-ray imaging system, covering the energy band from 5 keV to 80 keV. The hard X-ray imaging system consists of two hard X-ray telescopes (HXT) and the focal plane detectors (HXI). The HXT employs tightly-nested, conically-approximated thin foil Wolter-I optics. The mirror surfaces of HXT were coated with Pt/C depth-graded multilayers. We carried out ground calibrations of HXTs at the synchrotron radiation facility SPring-8/ BL20B2 Japan, and found that total effective area of two HXTs was about 350 cm2 at 30 keV, and the half power diameter of HXT was about 1.’9. After the launch of Hitomi, Hitomi observed several targets during the initial functional verification of the onboard instruments. The Hitomi software and calibration team (SCT) provided the Hitomi’s data of G21.5-0.9, a pulsar wind nebula, to the hardware team for the purpose of the instrument calibration. Through the analysis of the in-flight data, we have confirmed that the X-ray performance of HXTs in orbit was consistent with that obtained by the ground calibrations.

Ray-tracing simulation and in-orbit performance of the ASTRO-H hard x-ray telescope (HXT)

A ray-trace simulation code for the Hard X-ray Telescope (HXT) on board the Hitomi (ASTRO-H) satellite is being developed. The half power diameter and effective area simulated based on the code are consistent with ground measurements within 10%. The HXT observed the pulsar wind nebula G21.5-0.9 for 105 ksec. We confirmed that the encircled energy function and the half power diameter obtained from the data are consistent with the ground measurements.

Development of a 32-channel ASIC for an X-ray APD detector onboard the ISS

Abstract We report on the design and performance of a mixed-signal application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) dedicated to avalanche photodiodes (APDs) in order to detect hard X-ray emissions in a wide energy band onboard the International Space Station. To realize wide-band detection from 20 keV to 1 MeV, we use Ce:GAGG scintillators, each coupled to an APD, with low-noise front-end electronics capable of achieving a minimum energy detection threshold of 20 keV. The developed ASIC has the ability to read out 32-channel APD signals using 0.35xa0 μ m CMOS technology, and an analog amplifier at the input stage is designed to suppress the capacitive noise primarily arising from the large detector capacitance of the APDs. The ASIC achieves a performance of 2099 e − + 1.5 e − /pF at root mean square (RMS) with a wide 300 fC dynamic range. Coupling a reverse-type APD with a Ce:GAGG scintillator, we obtain an energy resolution of 6.7% (FWHM) at 662 keV and a minimum detectable energy of 20 keV at room temperature (20xa0°C). Furthermore, we examine the radiation tolerance for space applications by using a 90 MeV proton beam, confirming that the ASIC is free of single-event effects and can operate properly without serious degradation in analog and digital processing.

MAXI upper limits of the electromagnetic counterpart of GW170817

We report the MAXI observation of the gravitational-wave (GW) event GW170817 and the electromagnetic counterpart of GW170817. GW170817 is a binary neutron star coalescence candidate detected by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors, and it is the first event for which the optical counterpart has been discovered. In the MAXI observation, the Gas Slit Camera (GSC) covered approximately 62% of the sky region of the GW event within 90% probability during the first 92 min of orbit after the trigger. No significant X-ray transient was detected in the error region, and the upper limit of the average flux with a significance of 3

The Hitomi (ASTRO-H) hard x-ray telescope (HXT): current status of calibration

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Spectral Evolutions Study of Gamma-Ray Burst Exponential Decays with Suzaku-WAM

in the 2--10 keV band was 53/26 mCrab (one-orbit observation/one-day observation). In the optical counterpart of GW170817, the observational window of GSC at the position started at 20 s after the GW trigger, but the high voltage of GSC was unfortunately off at the time because the ISS was entering a high-particle-background region. The first observation of the position by GSC was eventually performed at 16797 sec (4.6 hours) since the GW trigger, yielding the 3

SWIFTGRB GRB071010B: OUTLIER OF THEEsrcpeak–EγANDEiso–Esrcpeak–tsrcjetCORRELATIONS

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