The Broad Band X-ray Telescope (BBXRT)

BBXRT in the Shuttle bay in flight">
The Broad Band X-ray Telescope (BBXRT) was flown on the space shuttle Columbia (STS-35) as part of the ASTRO-1 payload. It was designed and built at the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at NASA/GSFC.
BBXRT was the first focusing X-ray telescope operating over a broad energy range 0.3-12 keV with a moderate energy resolution (90 eV at 1 keV and 150eV at 6 keV).

Mission Characteristics
Lifetime : December 2 1990 - December 11 1990
Energy Range : 0.3 - 12 keV
Payload :

Two Co-Aligned Telescopes each with a segmented Si(Li) solid state
spectrometer (detector A and B) composite of five pixels.
Total FOV 17.4 ´ diameter, Central pixel FOV 4 ´ diameter
Total area 765 cm² at 1.5 keV, and 300 cm² at 7 keV

Science Highlight :

Resolved iron K line in the binaries Cen X-3 and Cyg X-2

Detect evidence of line broadening in NGC 4151
Study of cooling flow in clusters
Archive : Spectra, Lightcurves and Raw data
[About BBXRT] (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/bbxrt/bbxrt_about.html) [Archive] (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/bbxrt/archive/bbxrt_archive.html) [Software] (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/bbxrt/software/bbxrt_software.html) [Gallery] (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/bbxrt/bbxrt_images.html) [Publications] (http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/bbxrt/bib/bbxrt_biblio.html)

Imagine the Universe is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Nicholas White (Director), within the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Imagine Team
Project Leader: Dr. Jim Lochner
All material on this site has been created and updated between 1997-2004.