As China's first X-ray astronomical satellite, the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), which was dubbed as Insight-HXMT after the launch on June 15, 2017, is a wide-band (1-250 keV) slat-collimator-based X-ray astronomy satellite with the
The Insight-Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT) is a broad band X-ray and gamma-ray (1-3000 keV) astronomy satellite. The High Energy X-ray telescope (HE) is one of its three main telescopes. The main detector plane of HE is composed of 18 NaI(Tl)/CsI(Na) phoswich detectors, where NaI(Tl) serves as primary detector to measure ~ 20-250 keV photons incident from the field of view (FOV) defined by the collimators, and CsI(Na) is used as an active shield detector to NaI(Tl) by pulse shape discrimination. CsI(Na) is also used as an omnidirectional gamma-ray monitor. The HE collimators have a diverse FOV: 1.1°x 5.7° (15 units), 5.7°x 5.7° (2 units) and blocked (1 unit), thus the combined FOV of HE is about 5.7°x 5.7°. Each HE detector has a diameter of 190 mm, resulting in the total geometrical area of about 5100 cm 2 . The energy resolution is ~15% at 60 keV. The timing accuracy is better than 10 μs and dead-time for each detector is less than 10 μs. HE is devoted to observe the spectra and temporal variability of X-ray sources in the 20-250 keV band either by pointing observations for known sources or scanning observations to unveil new sources, and to monitor the gamma-ray sky in 0.2-3 MeV. This paper presents the design and performance of the HE instruments. Results of the on-ground calibration experiments are also reported.
We present the X-ray timing results of the new black hole candidate (BHC) MAXI J1535-571 during its 2017 outburst from Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight -HXMT) observations taken from 2017 September 6 to 23. Following the definitions given by Belloni (2010), we find that the source exhibits state transitions from Low/Hard state (LHS) to Hard Intermediate state (HIMS) and eventually to Soft Intermediate state (SIMS). Quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) are found in the intermediate states, which suggest different types of QPOs. With the large effective area of Insight -HXMT at high energies, we are able to present the energy dependence of the QPO amplitude and centroid frequency up to 100 keV which is rarely explored by previous satellites. We also find that the phase lag at the type-C QPOs centroid frequency is negative (soft lags) and strongly correlated with the centroid frequency. By assuming a geometrical origin of type-C QPOs, the source is consistent with being a high inclination system.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.