SAX: High Pressure Gas Scintillation Proportional Counter (HP-GSPC)

This is only a general description of the instrument. Please, refer to the Instrument Home Pages for updated information.

• The HP-GSPC, with its X-ray energy range of 3-120 keV will complement the activity of the C/S and extend the measurements to higher energies. Its very high energy resolution above 10 keV will be particularly important in the study of emission lines and absorption features in the spectra of celestial X-ray sources.
  

• As in the C/S, the HP-GSPC uses a gas scintillation proportional counter to detect X-rays, however filled with 5 atmospheres of Xenon to allow high energy X-rays to be detected. Its field of view of one degree is defined by a near circular cell collimator, above the gas cell entrance window, which can be offset in pointing direction to enable samples of background to be taken for subtraction from the data, when the instrument is observing a celestial X-ray source. The scintillation light in the gas cell, derived from the interaction of each incoming X-ray, is seen by an array of seven photomultiplier tubes mounted in the Anger camera configuration, whose signals are combined so that the derived energy of the X-ray is corrected for position of interaction in the cell. This notably improves the spectral energy resolution of the instrument.

This file was last modified on Wednesday, 02-Sep-1998 17:28:55 CEST by Mauro Orlandini