The Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on the SWIFT Midex Mission
Abstract
he burst alert telescope (BAT) is one of three instruments on the Swift MIDEX spacecraft to study gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The BAT first detects the GRB and localizes the burst direction to an accuracy of 1 4 arcmin within 20 s after the start of the event. The GRB trigger initiates an autonomous spacecraft slew to point the two narrow field-of-view (FOV) instruments at the burst location within 20 70 s so to make follow-up X-ray and optical observations. The BAT is a wide-FOV, coded-aperture instrument with a CdZnTe detector plane. The detector plane is composed of 32,768 pieces of CdZnTe (4×4×2 mm), and the coded-aperture mask is composed of ̃52,000 pieces of lead (5×5×1 mm) with a 1-m separation between mask and detector plane. The BAT operates over the 15 150 keV energy range with ̃7 keV resolution, a sensitivity of ̃10-8 erg s-1 cm-2, and a 1.4 sr (half-coded) FOV. We expect to detect > 100 GRBs/year for a 2-year mission. The BAT also performs an all-sky hard X-ray survey with a sensitivity of ̃2 m Crab (systematic limit) and it serves as a hard X-ray transient monitor.
- Publication:
-
Space Science Reviews
- Pub Date:
- October 2005
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s11214-005-5096-3
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/0507410
- Bibcode:
- 2005SSRv..120..143B
- Keywords:
-
- gamma-ray;
- GRB;
- hard X-ray;
- survey;
- burst;
- afterglow;
- CZT;
- coded aperture;
- astrophysics;
- cosmology;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 18 Pages, 12 Figures, To be published in Space Science Reviews