Ultraviolet Imaging Detectors for the GOLD Mission

摘要

The GOLD mission is a NASA Explorer class ultraviolet Earth observing spectroscopy instrument that will be flown on a telecommunications satellite in geostationary orbit in 2018. Microchannel plate detectors operating in the 132 nm to 162 nm FUV bandpass with 2D imaging cross delay line readouts and electronics have been built for each of the two spectrometer channels for GOLD. The detectors are "open face" with CsI photocathodes, providing ～30% efficiency at 130.4 nm and ～15% efficiency at 160.8 nm. These detectors with their position encoding electronics provide ～600 × 500 FWHM resolution elements and are photon counting, with event handling rates of > 200 KHz. The operational details of the detectors and their performance are discussed.