In-flight PSF calibration of the NuSTAR hard X-ray optics
Abstract
We present results of the point spread function (PSF) calibration of the hard X-ray optics of the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). Immediately post-launch, NuSTAR has observed bright point sources such as Cyg X-1, Vela X-1, and Her X-1 for the PSF calibration. We use the point source observations taken at several off-axis angles together with a ray-trace model to characterize the in-orbit angular response, and find that the ray-trace model alone does not fit the observed event distributions and applying empirical corrections to the ray-trace model improves the fit significantly. We describe the corrections applied to the ray-trace model and show that the uncertainties in the enclosed energy fraction (EEF) of the new PSF model is (approximately less than) 3% for extraction apertures of R (approximately greater than) 60″ with no significant energy dependence. We also show that the PSF of the NuSTAR optics has been stable over a period of ~300 days during its in-orbit operation.
Additional Information
© 2014 SPIE. Date Published: 24 July 2014. This work was supported under NASA Contract No. NNG08FD60C, and made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We thank the NuSTAR Operations, Software and Calibration teams for support with the execution and analysis of these observations. This research has made use of the NuSTAR Data Analysis Software (NuSTARDAS) jointly developed by the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC, Italy) and the California Institute of Technology (USA).Attached Files
Published - An_2014p91141Q.pdf
Submitted - 1406.7419v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 58212
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150612-100131748
- NASA
- NNG08FD60C
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
-
2015-06-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- NuSTAR, Space Radiation Laboratory
- Series Name
- Proceedings of SPIE
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 9144
- Other Numbering System Name
- Space Radiation Laboratory
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 2014-43