English

Calibration of the Spectrometer aboard the INTEGRAL satellite

Astrophysics 2017-04-26 v1

Abstract

SPI, the Spectrometer on board the ESA INTEGRAL satellite, to be launched in October 2002, will study the gamma-ray sky in the 20 keV to 8 MeV energy band with a spectral resolution of 2 keV for photons of 1 MeV, thanks to its 19 germanium detectors spanning an active area of 500 cm2. A coded mask imaging technique provides a 2 deg angular resolution. The 16 deg field of view is defined by an active BGO veto shield, furthermore used for background rejection. In April 2001 the flight model of SPI underwent a one-month calibration campaign at CEA in Bruy\`eres le Ch\^atel using low intensity radioactive sources and the CEA accelerator for homogeneity measurements and high intensity radioactive sources for imaging performance measurements. After integration of all scientific payloads (the spectrometer SPI, the imager IBIS and the monitors JEM-X and OMC) on the INTEGRAL satellite, a cross-calibration campaign has been performed at the ESA center in Noordwijk. A set of sources has been placed in the field of view of the different instruments in order to compare their performances and determine their mutual influence. Some of those sources had already been used in Bruy\`eres during the SPI standalone test. For the lowest energy band calibration an X-ray generator has been used. We report on the scientific goals of this calibration activity, and present the measurements performed as well as some preliminary results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0310792,
  title  = {Calibration of the Spectrometer aboard the INTEGRAL satellite},
  author = {Stéphane Schanne and B. Cordier and M. Gros and D. Attié and P. v. Ballmoos and L. Bouchet and R. Carli and P. Connell and R. Diehl and P. Jean and J. Kiener and A. v. Kienlin and J. Knödlseder and P. Laurent and G. Lichti and P. Mandrou and J. Paul and P. Paul and J. -P. Roques and F. Sanchez and V. Schönfelder and C. Shrader and G. Skinner and A. Strong and S. Sturner and V. Tatischeff and B. Teegarden and G. Vedrenne and G. Weidenspointner and C. Wunderer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0310792},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

12 pages, 19 figures, Published in Proceedings of SPIE conference, 24-28 August 2002, Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA