Motivated by a paper (Kirsch et al. 2005) on possible use of the Crab Nebula as a standard candle for calibrating X-ray response functions, we examine consequences of intrinsic departures from a single (absorbed) power law upon such calibrations. We limit our analyses to three more modern X-ray instruments-the ROSAT/PSPC, the RXTE/PCA, and the XMM-Newton/EPIC-pn (burst mode). The results indicate a need to refine two of the three response functions studied. We are also able to distinguish between two current theoretical models for the system spectrum.
@article{arxiv.1003.1916,
title = {On Calibrations using the Crab Nebula and Models of the Nebular X-ray Emission},
author = {M. C. Weisskopf and M. Guainazzi and K. Jahoda and N. Shaposhnikov and S. L. O'Dell and V. E. Zavlin and C. Wilson-Hodge and R. F. Elsner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.1916},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
22 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ.