Developments toward the Nuclear Compton Telescope

Author

Boggs, S.E. ; Amrose, S. ; Coburn, W. ; Holland, G. ; Lin, R.P. ; Millan, R. ; Smith, D. ; Amman, M. ; Burks, M.T. ; Hull, E.L. ; Luke, P.N. ; Madden, N.W. ; Jean, P. ; vonBallmoos, P. ; Craig, W. ; Ziock, K.

Author_Institution

Space Sci. Lab., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2001

Firstpage

496

Abstract

Our collaboration has begun the design and development of a prototype high resolution Compton telescope utilizing 3-D imaging germanium detectors. The Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) is a balloon-borne soft gamma-ray (0.2-15 MeV) telescope to study astrophysical sources of nuclear line emission and polarization. NCT will study gamma-ray radiation with very high spectral resolution, moderate angular resolution, and high sensitivity. The instrument has a novel, ultra-compact design optimized for studying nuclear line emission in the critical 0.5-2 MeV range, and polarization in the 0.2-0.5 MeV range. We are currently developing a small NCT prototype for a conventional US balloon flight. This flight will critically test the novel instrument technologies, event analysis techniques, and background rejection capabilities we have developed for high resolution Compton telescopes.

Keywords

astronomical telescopes; gamma-ray astronomy; germanium radiation detectors; 0.2 to 15 MeV; Ge; Ge detector; Nuclear Compton Telescope; background rejection; balloon-bome; event analysis; nuclear line emission; soft gamma-ray telescope; Collaboration; Germanium; High-resolution imaging; Image resolution; Instruments; Optical design; Optical imaging; Polarization; Prototypes; Telescopes;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2001 IEEE

ISSN

1082-3654

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7324-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NSSMIC.2001.1008506

Filename

1008506