ALEXIS experiment: current status and performance
Abstract
The Array of Low Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors (ALEXIS) experiment consists of a mini- satellite containing six wide angle EUV/ultrasoft X-ray telescopes. Its purpose is to map out the sky in three narrow (approximately 5%) bandpasses around 66, 71, and 93 eV. The mission will be launched on the Pegasus Air Launched Vehicle in 1992 into a 400 nautical mile, high inclination orbit. The project is a collaborative effort between Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and the University of California-Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. The six telescopes are arranged in three pairs in such a manner that as the satellite spins twice a minute they scan the entire anti-solar hemisphere. Each f/1 telescope consists of a spherical multilayer coated mirror with a spherical microchannel plate detector located at the prime focus and a thin aluminum or lexan/boron filter in front of the detector. The multilayer coatings determine the bandpasses of the telescopes. Each telescope has field of view of 33 degrees. Unlike grazing incidence x-ray telescopes, the point spread function is uniform over the entire field of view with a FWHM of approximately 0.5 degrees determined by spherical aberration. In this paper we present the status of the project as of July 1992 as well as summary results from the pre-flight telescope calibration procedures.
- Publication:
-
EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy III
- Pub Date:
- October 1992
- DOI:
- 10.1117/12.130669
- Bibcode:
- 1992SPIE.1743...83B
- Keywords:
-
- Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation;
- Pegasus Satellites;
- Satellite-Borne Instruments;
- X Ray Imagery;
- X Ray Telescopes;
- Calibrating;
- Data Bases;
- Pipelining (Computers);
- Software Tools;
- Unix (Operating System);
- Spacecraft Instrumentation