Development of the collimator response of gas slit camera of MAXI

摘要

Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) is an X-ray all-sky scanner, which will be attached on Exposed Facility of Japanese Experiment Module dubbed "Kibo" of International Space Station (ISS). MAXI will be launched by the Space Shuttle or the Japanese H-IIA Transfer Vehicle (HTV) in 2008. MAXI carries two types of X-ray cameras: Solid-state Slit Camera (SSC) for 0.5 - 10 keV and Gas Slit Camera (GSC) for 2-30 keV bands. Both have long narrow fields of view (FOV) made by a slit and orthogonally arranged collimator plates (slats). The FOV will sweep almost the whole sky once every 96 minutes by utilizing the orbital motion of ISS. Then the light curve of an X-ray point source become triangular shape in one transit. In this paper, we present the actual triangular response of the GSC collimator, obtained by our calibration. In fact they are deformed by gaps between the slats, leaning angle of the slats, and the effective width of the slats. We are measuring these sizes by shooting X-ray beams into the detector behind the collimator. We summarize the calibration and present the first compilation of the data to make the GSC collimator response, which will be useful for public users.