The RHESSI Spectrometer
Abstract
RHESSI observes solar photons over three orders of magnitude in energy (3 keV to 17 MeV) with a single instrument: a set of nine cryogenically cooled coaxial germanium detectors. With their extremely high energy resolution, RHESSI can resolve the line shape of every known solar gamma-ray line except the neutron capture line at 2.223 MeV. High resolution also allows clean separation of thermal and non-thermal hard X-rays and the accurate measurement of even extremely steep power-law spectra. Detector segmentation, fast signal processing, and two sets of movable attenuators allow RHESSI to make high-quality spectra and images of flares across seven orders of magnitude in intensity. Here we describe the configuration and operation of the RHESSI spectrometer, show early results on in-flight performance, and discuss the principles of spectroscopic data analysis used by the RHESSI software.
- Publication:
-
Solar Physics
- Pub Date:
- November 2002
- DOI:
- 10.1023/A:1022400716414
- Bibcode:
- 2002SoPh..210...33S
- Keywords:
-
- Response Matrix;
- Segmentation Boundary;
- South Atlantic Anomaly;
- Solar Photon;
- Front Segment