TY - GEN
T1 - First peek of ASTRO-H Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) in-orbit performance
AU - Okajima, Takashi
AU - Soong, Yang
AU - Serlemitsos, Peter
AU - Mori, Hideyuki
AU - Olsen, Larry
AU - Robinson, David
AU - Koenecke, Richard
AU - Chang, Bill
AU - Hahne, Devin
AU - Iizuka, Ryo
AU - Ishida, Manabu
AU - Maeda, Yoshitomo
AU - Sato, Toshiki
AU - Kikuchi, Naomichi
AU - Kurashima, Sho
AU - Nakaniwa, Nozomi
AU - Hayashi, Takayuki
AU - Ishibashi, Kazunori
AU - Miyazawa, Takuya
AU - Tachibana, Kenji
AU - Tamura, Keisuke
AU - Furuzawa, Akihiro
AU - Tawara, Yuzuru
AU - Sugita, Satoshi
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 SPIE.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - ASTRO-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 NASA's 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 × 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.
AB - ASTRO-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 NASA's 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 × 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.
KW - ASTRO-H
KW - Hitomi
KW - X-ray mirror
KW - X-ray optics
KW - X-ray telescope
KW - X-rays
KW - soft X-rays
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85003545102
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85003545102#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1117/12.2231705
DO - 10.1117/12.2231705
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85003545102
T3 - Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
BT - Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016
A2 - Bautz, Marshall
A2 - Takahashi, Tadayuki
A2 - den Herder, Jan-Willem A.
PB - SPIE
T2 - Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2016: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Y2 - 26 June 2016 through 1 July 2016
ER -