Paper 13093-59
In-orbit performance of the Xtend-XMA onboard XRISM
On demand | Presented live 19 June 2024
Abstract
XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) is an X-ray astronomy satellite developed in collaboration with JAXA, NASA and ESA. It successfully launched on Sept. 7, 2023. Two complementary X-ray telescopes, Resolve and Xtend are on-board XRISM. Resolve uses the pixelized X-ray micro calorimeter developed by NASA/GSFC and has very high energy resolution of 5 eV. On the other hand, Xtend uses an X-ray CCD camera as its focal plane detector which has high spatial resolution and a wide field of view. We evaluated the performance of the X-ray Mirror Assembly (XMA) for Xtend using data observed during the commissioning and PV phases of XRISM. To verify the imaging performance, the Point Spread Functions (PSF) generated from the observations of NGC 4151 and PDS 456 were compared with the ground-calibration results. The results show that the imaging performance of Xtend-XMA is not significantly different from that of the ground calibration, and that it meet the requirement. The effective area was verified by comparing the results of simultaneous observations of 3C 273 by XRISM and four X-ray astronomy satellites (Chandra, XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and Swift). The results of the fitting of the X-ray spectrum of Xtend show no significant difference from the results of other satellites, suggesting the effective area used for fitting is correct. The on-axis position on the detector was estimated from the intensity of the Abell 2029 observations at four off-axis angles. The on-axis is about 40 arcsec away from the aim point, and the decrease in effective area at the aim point is less than 1%. Stray light observations of the Crab Nebula at 60 arcmin off-axis were obtained at two different satellite roll angles. The stray light intensity obtained at each roll angle was significantly different, verifying the dependence of the stray light on the roll angle.
Presenter
Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County (United States)
Dr. Tamura's major is X-ray astronomy, and he has conducted X-ray observations of supernova remnants and X-ray pulsars. In particular, he has focused on the development of instruments for satellites and balloons, especially X-ray optics. He has been involved in the development of the hard X-ray telescope on Hitomi and the development of X-ray telescopes for balloon experiments such as InFOCuS and NuSMIT.
He was involved in the ground calibration of the X-ray Mirror Assembly (XMA) onboard the X-ray astronomy satellite XRISM at NASA/GSFC, and has performed ground calibration of two XMAs using the 100-m X-ray beamline at NASA/GSFC.