Initial operations of the Soft X-ray Imager onboard XRISM

Files

2406.19910v1.pdf (7.01 MB)

Links to Files

http://arxiv.org/abs/2406.19910

Permanent Link

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2406.19910
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/34993

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UMBC Faculty Collection
UMBC Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST) / Center for Research and Exploration in Space Sciences & Technology II (CRSST II)

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Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2024-06-28

Type of Work

conference papers and proceedings
preprints
Text

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Citation of Original Publication

Rights

This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain

Subjects

Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

XRISM (X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) is an astronomical satellite with the capability of high-resolution spectroscopy with the X-ray microcalorimeter, Resolve, and wide field-of-view imaging with the CCD camera, Xtend. The Xtend consists of the mirror assembly (XMA: X-ray Mirror Assembly) and detector (SXI: Soft X-ray Imager). The components of SXI include CCDs, analog and digital electronics, and a mechanical cooler. After the successful launch on September 6th, 2023 (UT) and subsequent critical operations, the mission instruments were turned on and set up. The CCDs have been kept at the designed operating temperature of −110◦C after the electronics and cooling system were successfully set up. During the initial operation phase, which continued for more than a month after the critical operations, we verified the observation procedure, stability of the cooling system, all the observation options with different imaging areas and/or timing resolutions, and operations for protection against South Atlantic Anomaly. We optimized the operation procedure and observation parameters including the cooler settings, imaging areas for the specific modes with higher timing resolutions, and event selection algorithm. We summarize our policy and procedure of the initial operations for SXI. We also report on a couple of issues we faced during the initial operations and lessons learned from them.