J/AN/333/209 Effective area of X-ray microcalorimeter (Schartel+, 2012)
Space astronomy for the mid-21st century: Robotically maintained space
telescopes.
Schartel N.
<Astron. Nachrichten 333, 209 (2012)>
=2012AN....333..209S 2012AN....333..209S
ADC_Keywords: Models ; Energy distributions ; X-ray sources
Keywords: robotics - instrumentation: miscellaneous - space vehicles -
telescopes - X-rays: general
Abstract:
The historical development of ground based astronomical telescopes
leads us to expect that space-based astronomical telescopes will need
to be operational for many decades. The exchange of scientific
instruments in space will be a prerequisite for the long lasting
scientific success of such missions. Operationally, the possibility to
repair or replace key spacecraft components in space will be
mandatory. We argue that these requirements can be fulfilled with
robotic missions and see the development of the required engineering
as the main challenge. Ground based operations, scientifically and
technically, will require a low operational budget of the running
costs. These can be achieved through enhanced autonomy of the
spacecraft and mission independent concepts for the support of the
software.
This concept can be applied to areas where the mirror capabilities do
not constrain the lifetime of the mission.
Description:
XMM-Newton has three X-ray telescopes. To estimate the total effective
area of hypothetical X-ray microcalorimeter spectrometers onboard
XMM-Newton we considered three components: the effective area of the
telescopes, the filter transmission and the quantum efficiency of the
microcalorimeter. The pn-CCD camera (Strueder L. et al.,
2001A&A...365L..18S 2001A&A...365L..18S) is operated in the focal plane of X-ray telescope
3 which is the telescope without reflection grating array unit. We use
the on-axis effective area of telescope 3 as provided in the current
calibration file XRT3XAREAEF0011.CCF1. We approximate the
transmission of the optical filters of the microcalorimeter through
the transmission of the thick filter of pn (EPN FILTERTRANSX
0014.CCF). We assume a quantum efficiency (including filling factor
and 'dead' detector elements) of 0.93 for energies below 4.5keV
which decreases with ∼0.11ke/V for higher energies.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
xmm_cal.dat 25 12000 Estimate the total effective area
xmm_cal.fits 2880 86 FITS file of xmm_cal
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: xmm_cal.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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2- 12 E11.6 keV E Energy
15- 25 E11.6 cm+2 Area Effective area
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Acknowledgements:
Norbert Schartel, Norbert.Schartel(at)sciops.esa.int
(End) Norbert Schartel [ESA, Spain], Patricia Vannier [CDS] 12-Jul-2012