A Digitized Spark Chamber for Gamma Ray Astronomy

A digitized spark chamber has been developed for balloon borne and satellite gamma ray astronomy. The detector is a multi-array wire, plate chamber utilizing magnetic cores for buffer storage and magnetic tape for data logging. The high voltage system consists of a set of gas krytrons triggered by avalanche transistor pulsers. Track information is stored in parallel into a ferrite core array mounted to the chamber face and buffered via a linear select memory system into a sixteen track sub miniature tape recorder for bulk storage. Also included is a 16 channel rate meter and house keeping multiplexer which interleaves data with track information onto the tape recorder. The package is designed to operate for long periods of time on a single charge of neon-helium gas in a free balloon environment.