AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 12 Con-X Instruments and Optics
Poster, Monday, 9:20am-7:00pm, January 9, 2006, Exhibit Hall

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[12.03] Event Driven X-ray CCD Detector Arrays for the Reflection Grating Spectrometer on the Constellation-X Mission

G. R. Ricker, J. P. Doty, S. E. Kissel, G. Y. Prigozhin (MIT)

The Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) on Constellation-X will provide very high spectral resolution in the low energy X-ray band below 2 keV, where most atomic features are located. A baseline value for the RGS of E/deltaE > 300 is planned, with values of E/deltaE ~ 3000 being discussed as a possible goal for an offplane grating design. Thus, the RGS will complement Constellation-X's X-ray microcalorimeter, which has its highest spectral resolution at energies greater than 2 keV. The Reflection Grating Spectrometer Focal Plane Camera (RFC) reads out the RGS spectra by means of a long array of extended low-energy response, event-driven silicon CCDs (EDCCDs). The current instrument baseline calls for coverage of the X-ray energy (wavelength) range from 0.25 to 2 keV (6 - 50 Å) in an elongated, multi-CCD array. The back-illuminated EDCCD can accomodate these goals, by providing rapid frame rates (~ 30 Hz) at non-cryogenic temperatures (~ -20C or higher), for power requirements ~ 100x less than for conventional CCDs. The status of both the RFC detector and array technologies will be presented.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: grr@space.mit.edu

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