Calibration of the High Energy Replicated Optics to Explore the Sun (HEROES) Hard X-ray Telescope

Abstract

Sun (HEROES) hard Xray telescope flew as a balloon payload from Ft. Sumner, NM. HEROES observed the Sun, the black hole binary GRS 1915+105, and the Crab Nebula during its 27 h flight. In this paper, we describe laboratory calibration measurements of the HEROES detectors using line and continuum sources and applications of these measurements to define channel to energy (gain) corrections for observed events and to define detector response matrices. We characterize the HEROES X-ray grazing incidence optics using measurements taken in the Stray Light Facility (SLF) in Huntsville, AL, and using ray traces. We describe the application of our calibration measurements to in-flight observations of the Crab Nebula.

SuperHERO: Design of a new hard-X-ray focusing telescope

“…For both, interpolation between aspect updates will be achieved by integrating gyro data from the inertial pointing system. A more extensive discussion of the pre-flight calibration process for HEROES, which will have a similar process to that of SuperHERO, can be found in reference [15].…”