Search Publications
The INTErnational Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory: INTEGRAL Highlights
Ubertini, Pietro; Bazzano, Angela
The INTEGRAL Space Observatory was selected as the second Medium size mission (M2) of the ESAs Horizon 2000 vision programme. INTEGRAL is the first high angular and spectral resolution hard X-ray and soft γ-ray observatory with a wide band spectral response ranging from 3 keV up to 10 MeV energy band. This capability is supplemented by an unpreced…
Ground calibrations of the Solar Intensity X-ray Spectrometer (SIXS) on board BepiColombo
Andersson, H.; Alha, L.; Huovelin, J. +4 more
In this paper we present the methods, results, and analysis of the BepiColombo SIXS instruments' ground calibrations. The aim of these calibrations was to characterize the performance of the three SIXS X-ray detectors to enable reliable spectral analysis of the solar X-ray data. The ground calibrations for characterizing the performance of the thr…
The effect of protons on the performance of second generation Swept Charge Devices
Gow, Jason P. D.; Holland, Andrew D.; Pool, Peter J. +1 more
The e2v technologies Swept Charge Device (SCD) was developed as a large area detector for X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) analysis, achieving near Fano-limited spectroscopy at -15 °C. The SCD was flown in the XRF instruments onboard the European Space Agency's SMART-1 and the Indian Space Research Organisation's Chandrayaan-1 lunar missions. The second g…
Simulated performance of a single pixel PIN spectrometer SCXM equipped with a concentrator optics in Solar coronal X-ray observations
Alha, L.; Huovelin, J.; Nevalainen, J.
In this paper we present simulated solar coronal X-ray observations to verify the sensitivity of a new hypothetical instrument design. These simulations are folded through this X-ray spectrometer having a moderate size circular field of view (FoV) of 1.6°. This SCXM (Solar Coronal X-ray Mapper) is designed to compose of a single pixel silicon PIN …
The INTEGRAL high energy sky and the MeV-GeV connection
de Rosa, A.; Bird, A. J.; Ubertini, P. +5 more
After more than 6 years of operation, ESAs INTEGRAL Space Observatory has produced a wide number of results, ranging from the inventory of the high energy sources, depicting a gamma-ray sky populated by more than 700 high energy objects, to the discovery of the new class of Super Giant Fast X-ray Transient (SFXT) to dozens of variable galactic and…
The flaring blazars of the first 1.5 years of the AGILE mission
Antonelli, L. A.; Costa, E.; Mereghetti, S. +60 more
We report the AGILE γ-ray observations and the results of the multiwavelength campaigns on seven flaring blazars detected by the mission: During two multiwavelength campaigns, we observed γ-ray activity from two Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars of the Virgo region, e.g. 3C 279 and 3C 273 (the latter being the first extragalactic source simultaneously o…
Calibration of the C1XS instrument on Chandrayaan-1
Howe, C. J.; Kellett, B. J.; Narendranath, S. +5 more
The Chandrayaan-1 X-ray spectrometer (C1XS) experiment on the Chandrayaan-1 mission was designed to carry out spectroscopic observations in the 1-10 keV range for deriving lunar chemistry. We present results from the ground calibration of the Swept Charge Devices (SCDs) on C1XS at the RESIK X-ray beam facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Ch…
Space radiation environment effects on X-ray CCD background
Hall, David J.; Holland, Andrew
Charge coupled devices (CCDs) are often employed as the detector of choice for observing X-rays in space. The instrument background experienced in orbit has a major impact on the overall sensitivity of the camera system. The instrument background for the European Space Agency X-ray Multi Mirror (XMM-Newton) mission was found to be much greater in …
Ground calibration of the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Solar Monitor (XSM)
Andersson, H.; Grande, M.; Alha, L. +9 more
The Chandrayaan-1 XSM ground calibrations are introduced. The aim of these calibrations was to characterize the performance of XSM, which enables a reliable spectral analysis with the solar X-ray data. The calibrations followed an improved procedure based on our experience from the SMART-1 XSM. The most important tasks in the calibrations were det…
X-ray tracing using Geant4
Vacanti, G.; Buis, E. J.
We describe an extension to the Geant4 software package that allows it to be used as a general purpose X-ray tracing package. We demonstrate the use of our extension by building a model of the X-ray optics of the X-ray observatory XMM-Newton, calculating its effective area, and comparing the results with the published calibration curves.