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Timing Calibration of the NuSTAR X-Ray Telescope
- Source :
- Astrophys.J., Astrophys.J., 2021, 908 (2), pp.184. ⟨10.3847/1538-4357/abd1d6⟩
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- American Astronomical Society, 2021.
-
Abstract
- The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission is the first focusing X-ray telescope in the hard X-ray (3-79 keV) band. Among the phenomena that can be studied in this energy band, some require high time resolution and stability: rotation-powered and accreting millisecond pulsars, fast variability from black holes and neutron stars, X-ray bursts, and more. Moreover, a good alignment of the timestamps of X-ray photons to UTC is key for multi-instrument studies of fast astrophysical processes. In this Paper, we describe the timing calibration of the NuSTAR mission. In particular, we present a method to correct the temperature-dependent frequency response of the on-board temperature-compensated crystal oscillator. Together with measurements of the spacecraft clock offsets obtained during downlinks passes, this allows a precise characterization of the behavior of the oscillator. The calibrated NuSTAR event timestamps for a typical observation are shown to be accurate to a precision of ~65 microsec.<br />Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures. Comments welcome
- Subjects :
- Photon
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Astrophysics::High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
FOS: Physical sciences
X-ray telescope
Astrophysics
01 natural sciences
law.invention
Telescope
law
Millisecond pulsar
0103 physical sciences
[PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-INS-DET]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
010303 astronomy & astrophysics
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
Physics
X-ray astronomy
Spacecraft
business.industry
Astrophysics::Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Neutron star
Space and Planetary Science
Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
[PHYS.ASTR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]
business
Crystal oscillator
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15384357
- Volume :
- 908
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....30b380cca0eadc0a774c97b379463268