[Previous] | [Session 16] | [Next]
A.M. Parsons (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), Swift/BAT Science Team
The Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) aboard NASA’s Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer is a large coded aperture gamma-ray telescope consisting of a 2.4 m (8’) x 1.2 m (4’) coded aperture mask supported 1 meter above a 5200 cm2 area detector plane containing 32,768 individual 4 mm x 4 mm x 2 mm CZT detectors. The BAT is now completely assembled and integrated with the Swift spacecraft in anticipation of an October 2004 launch. Extensive ground calibration measurements using a variety of radioactive sources have resulted in a moderately high fidelity model for the BAT spectral and photometric response. This paper describes these ground calibration measurements as well as related computer simulations used to study the efficiency and individual detector properties of the BAT detector array. The creation of a single spectral response model representative of the fully integrated BAT posed an interesting challenge and is at the heart of the public analysis tool ‘batdrmgen’ which computes a response matrix for any given sky position within the BAT FOV. This paper will describe the batdrmgen response generator tool and conclude with a description of the on-orbit calibration plans as well as plans for the future improvements needed to produce the more detailed spectral response model that is required for the construction of an all-sky hard x-ray survey.
This work was funded by the NASA Explorer Program
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/public/instruments/bat.html. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: parsons@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov
[Previous] | [Session 16] | [Next]
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #3
© 2004. The American Astronomical Soceity.