AAS 202nd Meeting, May 2003
Session 44 Future Optical/UV Astronomy from Space: Science and Mission Concepts
Topical Associated Poster, Wednesday, May 28, 2003, 10:00am-6:45pm, West Exhibit Hall

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[44.01] Tomographic Reconstruction of SPIDR Data

K.P. Wilton, T. Cook, D.G. Roy, W.C. Karl, S. Chakrabarti (Boston University)

In 2005 Boston University will launch the SPIDR (Spectroscopy and Photometry of the IGMs Diffuse Radiation) satellite as part of the NASA SMEX program. The SPIDR satellite will use tomographic techniques to detect and map warm/hot gas in the Galaxy and intergalactic medium. SPIDR instruments observe projections of the scene onto a 1-dimensional axis, which rotates with the spinning satellite. Two techniques for reconstructing this projection data are explored, a filtered back projection (FBP) and a maximum entropy method (MEM). FBP is linear, whereas MEM is a non-linear, iterative algorithm. We report on the results of computer simulations of both reconstruction techniques applied to the same data. Our results indicate that for the same observing condition, MEM can detect sources that are about a factor of 2-4 times fainter than FBP.

Financial support for this project has been provided by NASA contract NAS 5-03013.


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