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ASTRO-H is equipped with two modules of the SXT; one is for the Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS), an X-ray calorimeter, and the other is for the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI), an X-ray CCD camera. These SXT modules are called SXT-S and SXT-I, respectively. Of the two detector systems, the SXI has a large field of view, a square with 38' on a side. To cope with this, we have made a mosaic mapping of the stray light at a representative off-axis angle of 30' in the X-ray beam line at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. The effective area of the brightest secondary reflection is found of order 0.1% of the on-axis effective area at the energy of 1.49 keV. The other components are not so bright (<5 X 10-4 times smaller than the on-axis effective area). On the other hand, we have found that the effective area of the stray light in the SXS field of view (~3'x3') at large off-axis angles (>15') are ~10-4 times smaller than the on-axis effective area (~590 cm2 at 1.49 keV).
We present the current status of the calibration activity of two SXTs (SXT-1 and SXT-2). The developments of two SXTs were completed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). First X-ray measurements with a diverging beam at the GSFC 100m beamline found an angular resolution at 8.0 keV to be 1.1 and 1.0 arcmin (HPD) for SXT-1 and SXT-2, respectively. The full characterization of the X-ray performance has been now continuously calibrated with the 30m X-ray beamline facility at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) of Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) in Japan. We adopted a raster scan method with a narrow X-ray pencil beam with the divergence of ~ 15". X-ray characterization of the two SXTs has been measured from May and December 2013, respectively.
In the case of SXT-1, the on-axis effective area was approximately 580, 445, 370, 270, 185 and 90 cm2 at energies of 1.5, 4.5, 8.0, 9.4, 11.1 and 12.9 keV respectively. The effective area of SXT-2 is 2% larger than that of SXT-1 irrespective to X-ray energy. The on-axis angular resolution of SXT-1 was evaluated as 1.3 - 1.5 arcmin (HPD) in the 1.5 - 13 keV band. The resolution was slightly got worse at higher energies by ~ 0:3 arcmin. Otherwise, the resolution of SXT-2 is 1.2 arcmin, almost irrespective to X-ray energy. The field of view (FOV) was ~ 16 arcmin at 1.5 keV, decreasing with increasing X-ray energy, and became ~ 8 arcmin at 13 keV. The FOV is defined here as the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the vignetting curve.
The X-ray performance of SXT-1 and SXT-2 meets the system requirements. Because all the parameters of the SXT-2 is slightly better that of SXT-1, we adopted the SXT-2 telescope for the SXS detector of the Astro-H primary instrument with the narrow FOV.
ASTRO-H is an astrophysics satellite dedicated for non-dispersive X-ray spectroscopic study on selective celestial X-ray sources. Among the onboard instruments there are four Wolter-I X-ray mirrors of their reflectors’ figure in conical approximation. Two of the four are soft X-ray mirrors1, of which the energy range is from a few hundred eV to 15 keV. The focal point instruments will be a calorimeter (SXS) and a CCD camera (SXI), respectively. The mirrors were in quadrant configuration with photons being reflected consecutively in the primary and secondary stage before landing on the focal plane of 5.6 m away from the interface between the two stages. The reflectors of the mirror are made of heat-formed aluminum substrate of the thickness gauged of 152 μm, 229 μm, and 305 μm of the alloy 5052 H-19, followed by epoxy replication on gold-sputtered smooth Pyrex cylindrical mandrels to acquire the X-ray reflective surface. The epoxy layer is 10 μm nominal and surface gold layer of 0.2 μm. Improvements on angular response over its predecessors, e.g. Astro-E1/Suzaku mirrors, come from error reduction on the figure, the roundness, and the grazing angle/radius mismatching of the reflecting surface, and tighter specs and mechanical strength on supporting structure to reduce the reflector positioning and the assembly errors.
Each soft x-ray telescope (SXT), FM1 or FM2, were integrated from four independent quadrants of mirrors. The stray-light baffles, in quadrant configuration, were mounted onto the integrated mirror. Thermal control units were attached to the perimeter of the integrated mirror to keep the mirror within operating temperature in space. The completed instrument went through a series of optical alignment, thus made the quadrant images confocal and their optical axes in parallel to achieve highest throughput possible. Environmental tests were carried out, and optical quality of the telescopes has been confirmed. The optical and x-ray calibrations also include: angular resolution, effective area in the energy range of ~ 0.4 – 12keV, off-axis response, etc. Some of those are being carried out by our counterpart at JAXA/ISAS, Japan. We report the calibration results of the FM1 and FM2 that were obtained at Goddard Space Flight Center.
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