The Reflection Grating Spectrometer on board XMM-Newton
Kaastra, J. S.; Mewe, R.; Audard, M.; Güdel, M.; Sako, M.; Branduardi-Raymont, G.; de Vries, C. P.; Kahn, S. M.; Hailey, C. J.; Tamura, T.; Dubbeldam, L.; Peterson, J. R.; Brinkman, A. C.; den Herder, J. W.; Erd, C.; Cottam, J.; de Korte, P. A. J.; Rees, K.; Rasmussen, A. P.; Zehnder, A.; Sakelliou, I.; Aarts, H.; Tandy, J.; Thomsen, K.; Bixler, J. V.; den Boggende, A. J.; Decker, T.; Goulooze, H.; Guttridge, P.; Janabi, K. Al; van Leeuwen, B. J.; Mauche, C.; McCalden, A. J.; Naber, A.; Paerels, F. B.; Spodek, J.; Stern, M.; Welch, S.
Netherlands, United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland
Abstract
The ESA X-ray Multi Mirror mission, XMM-Newton, carries two identical Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) behind two of its three nested sets of Wolter I type mirrors. The instrument allows high-resolution (E/Delta E = 100 to 500) measurements in the soft X-ray range (6 to 38 Å, or 2.1 to 0.3 keV) with a maximum effective area of about 140 cm2 at 15 Å. Its design is optimized for the detection of the K-shell transitions of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, and silicon, as well as the L shell transitions of iron. The present paper gives a full description of the design of the RGS and its operational modes. We also review details of the calibrations and in-orbit performance including the line spread function, the wavelength calibration, the effective area, and the instrumental background.