The RHESSI Spectrometer |
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David M. Smith Submitted: 2002-09-19 15:39
RHESSI observes solar photons over three orders of magnitude in energy (3 keV to 17 MeV) with a single instrument: a set of nine cryogenically cooled coaxial germanium detectors. With their extremely high energy resolution, RHESSI can resolve the line shape of every known solar gamma-ray line except the neutron capture line at 2.223 MeV. High resolution also allows clean separation of thermal and non-thermal hard X-rays and the accurate measurement of even
extremely steep power-law spectra. Detector segmentation, fast signal processing, and two sets of movable attenuators allow RHESSI to make high-quality spectra and images of flares across seven orders of magnitude in intensity. Here we describe the configuration and operation of the RHESSI spectrometer, show early results on in-flight performance, and discuss the principles of spectroscopic data analysis
used by the RHESSI software.
Authors: D. M. Smith, R. P. Lin, P. Turin, D. W. Curtis,J. H. Primbsch, R. D. Campbell, R. Abiad, P. Schroeder - Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley; C. P. Cork, E. L. Hull, D. A. Landis, N. W. Madden, D. Malone, R. H. Pehl - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; T. Raudorf, P. Sangsingkeow - ORTEC; R. Boyle, I. S. Banks, K. Shirey - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Richard Schwartz - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/SSAI
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Publication Status: Solar Physics (in press)
Last Modified: 2002-09-23 14:35
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