The Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy Onboard the SATech-01 Satellite
Abstract
The Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy (LEIA), a pathfinder of the Wide-field X-ray Telescope of the Einstein Probe (EP) mission, was successfully launched onboard the SATech-01 satellite of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on 27 July 2022. In this paper, we introduce the design and on-ground test results of the LEIA instrument. Using state-of-the-art Micro-Pore Optics (MPO), a wide field-of-view (FoV) of 346 square degrees (18.6 degrees * 18.6 degrees) of the X-ray imager is realized. An optical assembly composed of 36 MPO chips is used to focus incident X-ray photons, and four large-format complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors, each of 6 cm * 6 cm, are used as the focal plane detectors. The instrument has an angular resolution of 4 - 8 arcmin (in FWHM) for the central focal spot of the point spread function, and an effective area of 2 - 3 cm2 at 1 keV in essentially all the directions within the field of view. The detection passband is 0.5 - 4 keV in the soft X-rays and the sensitivity is 2 - 3 * 10-11 erg s-1 cm-2 (about 1 mini-Crab) at 1,000 second observation. The total weight of LEIA is 56 kg and the power is 85 W. The satellite, with a design lifetime of 2 years, operates in a Sun-synchronous orbit of 500 km with an orbital period of 95 minutes. LEIA is paving the way for future missions by verifying in flight the technologies of both novel focusing imaging optics and CMOS sensors for X-ray observation, and by optimizing the working setups of the instrumental parameters. In addition, LEIA is able to carry out scientific observations to find new transients and to monitor known sources in the soft X-ray band, albeit limited useful observing time available.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2305.14895,
title = {The Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy Onboard the SATech-01 Satellite},
author = {Z. X. Ling and X. J. Sun and C. Zhang and S. L. Sun and G. Jin and S. N. Zhang and X. F. Zhang and J. B. Chang and F. S. Chen and Y. F. Chen and Z. W. Cheng and W. Fu and Y. X. Han and H. Li and J. F. Li and Y. Li and Z. D. Li and P. R. Liu and Y. H. Lv and X. H. Ma and Y. J. Tang and C. B. Wang and R. J. Xie and Y. L. Xue and A. L. Yan and Q. Zhang and C. Y. Bao and H. B. Cai and H. Q. Cheng and C. Z. Cui and Y. F. Dai and D. W. Fan and H. B. Hu and J. W. Hu and M. H. Huang and Z. Q. Jia and C. C. Jin and D. Y. Li and J. Q. Li and H. Y. Liu and M. J. Liu and Y. Liu and H. W. Pan and Y. L. Qiu and M. Sugizaki and H. Sun and W. X. Wang and Y. L. Wang and Q. Y. Wu and X. P. Xu and Y. F. Xu and H. N. Yang and X. Yang and B. Zhang and M. Zhang and W. D. Zhang and Z. Zhang and D. H. Zhao and X. Q. Cong and B. W. Jiang and L. H. Li and X. B. Qiu and J. N. Sun and D. T. Su and J. Wang and C. Wu and Z. Xu and X. M. Yang and S. K. Zhang and Z. Zhang and N. Zhang and Y. F. Zhu and H. Y. Ban and X. Z. Bi and Z. M. Cai and W. Chen and X. Chen and Y. H. Chen and Y. Cui and X. L. Duan and Z. G Feng and Y. Gao and J. W. He and T. He and J. J. Huang and F. Li and J. S. Li and T. J. Li and T. T. Li and H. Q. Liu and L. Liu and R. Liu and S. Liu and N. Meng and Q. Shi and A. T. Sun and Y. M. Wang and Y. B. Wang and H. C. Wu and D. X Xu and Y. Q Yang and Y. Yang and X. S. Yu and K. X. Zhang and Y. L. Zhang and Y. H. Zhang and Y. T. Zhang and H. Zhou and X. C. Zhu and J. S. Cheng and L. Qin and L. Wang and Q. L. Wang and M. Bai and R. L. Gao and Z. Ji and Y. R. Liu and F. L. Ma and Y. J. Shi and J. Su and Y. Y. Tan and J. Z. Tong and H. T. Xu and C. B. Xue and G. F. Xue and W. Yuan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.14895},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
Accepted by RAA