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

Okajima, Takashi; Soong, Yang; Serlemitsos, P. J.; Mori, Hajime; Olsen, L.; Robinson, David; Koenecke, Richard; Chang, Bill; Hahne, D. J.; Iizuka, Ryo; Ishida, M.; Maeda, Yoshitomo; Sato, Toshiki; Kikuchi, Naomichi; Kurashima, Sho; Nakaniwa, Nozomi; Hayashi, Takayuki; Ishibashi, Koji; Miyazawa, Tatsuo; Tachibana, Kunihide; Tamura, Kouichi; Furuzawa, Akihiro; Tawara, Yuzuru; Sugita, S.

doi:10.1117/12.2231705

Cited by 37 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Hereafter, we use this merged, gain-corrected spectrum. We also appropriately took into account the off-axis effective area of the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) 37 , when generating the telescope response for the merged data.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar abundance ratios of the iron-peak elements in the Perseus cluster

2017

Nature

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The metal abundance of the hot plasma that permeates galaxy clusters represents the accumulation of heavy elements produced by billions of supernovae. Therefore, X-ray spectroscopy of the intracluster medium provides an opportunity to investigate the nature of supernova explosions integrated over cosmic time. In particular, the abundance of the iron-peak elements (chromium, manganese, iron and nickel) is key to understanding how the progenitors of typical type Ia supernovae evolve and explode. Recent X-ray studies of the intracluster medium found that the abundance ratios of these elements differ substantially from those seen in the Sun, suggesting differences between the nature of type Ia supernovae in the clusters and in the Milky Way. However, because the K-shell transition lines of chromium and manganese are weak and those of iron and nickel are very close in photon energy, high-resolution spectroscopy is required for an accurate determination of the abundances of these elements. Here we report observations of the Perseus cluster, with statistically significant detections of the resonance emission from chromium, manganese and nickel. Our measurements, combined with the latest atomic models, reveal that these elements have near-solar abundance ratios with respect to iron, in contrast to previous claims. Comparison between our results and modern nucleosynthesis calculations disfavours the hypothesis that type Ia supernova progenitors are exclusively white dwarfs with masses well below the Chandrasekhar limit (about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun). The observed abundance pattern of the iron-peak elements can be explained by taking into account a combination of near- and sub-Chandrasekhar-mass type Ia supernova systems, adding to the mounting evidence that both progenitor types make a substantial contribution to cosmic chemical enrichment.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar abundance ratios of the iron-peak elements in the Perseus cluster

2017

Nature

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“…Various aspects of the soft x-ray spectrometer (SXS) such as in-orbit performance and other subsystems including the dewar will be described in detail elsewhere in this proceeding. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] The CSI includes the detector subsystem (DS) and the adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) subsystem. The DS includes the microcalorimeter detector array, the anticoincidence detector, and the detector assembly (DA).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

System design and implementation of the detector assembly of the Astro-H soft x-ray spectrometer

Chiao

Adams

Goodwin

et al. 2018

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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The soft x-ray spectrometer (SXS) on-board Astro-H presents to the science community unprecedented capability (<7 eV full width half max at 6 keV) for high-resolution spectral measurements in the range of 0.5 to 12 keV to study extended celestial sources. At the heart of the SXS is the x-ray calorimeter spectrometer (XCS) where detectors (calorimeter array and anticoincidence detector) operate at 50 mK, the bias circuit operates at nominal 1.3 K, and the first stage amplifiers operate at 130 K, all within a nominal 20-cm envelope. The design of the detector assembly (DA) in the XCS originates from the Astro-E x-ray spectrometer (XRS) and lessons learned from Astro-E and Suzaku. After the production of our engineering model, additional changes were made to improve our flight assembly process for better reliability and overall performance. We present the final design and implementation of the flight DA, compare its parameters and performance with Suzaku's XRS, and list susceptibilities to other subsystems as well as our lessons learned. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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“…It is equipped with two soft x-ray telescopes (SXTs) covering up to about 15 keV. 5,6 One of the two SXTs is for the soft x-ray spectroscopy (SXS: x-ray microcalorimeter detector) for high-resolution spectroscopy. The detector-limited field-of-view (FoV) of the SXS is 3.05 arc min 2 , comprising 6 × 6 pixels.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ground-based x-ray calibration of the Astro-H/Hitomi soft x-ray telescopes

Iizuka

Hayashi

Maeda

et al. 2018

J. Astron. Telesc. Instrum. Syst.

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We present the summary of the on-ground calibration of two soft x-ray telescopes (SXT-I and SXT-S), developed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), onboard Astro-H/Hitomi. After the initial x-ray measurements with a diverging beam at the GSFC 100-m beamline, we performed the full calibration of the x-ray performance, using the 30-m x-ray beamline facility at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in Japan. We adopted a raster scan method with a narrow x-ray pencil beam with a divergence of ∼15 00. The on-axis effective area (EA), half-power diameter, and vignetting function were measured at several energies between 1.5 and 17.5 keV. The detailed results appear in tables and figures in this paper. We measured and evaluated the performance of the SXT-S and the SXT-I with regard to the detectorlimited field-of-view and the pixel size of the paired flight detector, i.e., SXS and the SXI, respectively. The primary items measured are the EA, image quality, and stray light for on-axis and off-axis sources. The accurate measurement of these parameters is vital to make the precise response function of the ASTRO-H SXTs. This paper presents the definitive results of the ground-based calibration of the ASTRO-H SXTs.

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

Cited by 37 publications

References 3 publications

Solar abundance ratios of the iron-peak elements in the Perseus cluster

Solar abundance ratios of the iron-peak elements in the Perseus cluster

System design and implementation of the detector assembly of the Astro-H soft x-ray spectrometer

Ground-based x-ray calibration of the Astro-H/Hitomi soft x-ray telescopes

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