The 6th Japanese X-ray satellite, ASTRO-H, equips two Hard X-ray Telescopes (HXTs) to perform imaging spectroscopy up to 70 keV. The 2nd flight module (HXT-2) had been completed in July, 2013. After some environmental tests were passed, the X-ray performance of the HXT-2 was measured at the SPring-8 BL20B2, 3rd generation synchrotron facility. The angular resolution defined with a Half Power Diameter (HPD) was 1:′9 at 30 keV and 1:′8 at 50 keV. This small energy dependence is considered to be caused by the difference in image quality of each foil; the inner mirror shells have better quality than outer ones. The effective area was found to be 178 cm² at 30 keV and 82 cm² at 50 keV, both of which exceed the requirement. Furthermore, the detailed energy dependence of the effective area was examined for a limited aperture in the 30{70 keV band with a pitch of 1 keV. We also measured the off-axis dependence of the effective area at 50 keV, and then determined the optical axis. The field of view of the HXT-2 was found to be 5:′6 (FWHM of the vignetting function), consistent with the simulation. In this paper, we also report the detailed analysis of the ground calibration data, which will be used for image reconstruction by a ray-tracing simulator.

Date Published: 24 July 2014
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 9144, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 914457 (24 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2055656

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9144:
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Tadayuki Takahashi; Jan-Willem A. den Herder; Mark Bautz, Editor(s)