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Results from the Advanced Scintillator Compton Telescope (ASCOT) Balloon Payload

Journal Article · · Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2576108· OSTI ID:1866949
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [3]
  1. Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham, NH (United States). Space Science Center
  2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
  3. Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham, NH (United States). Space Science Center; Southwest Research Institute, Durham, NH (United States)
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The Advanced Scintillator Compton Telescope (ASCOT) is a medium-energy gamma-ray Compton telescope flown on NASA’s high-altitude scientific balloon from Palestine, TX on 5th July 2018. It uses commercially available highperformance scintillators like Cerium Bromide (CeBr3) and p-terphenyl along with compact readout devices - silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) - for an improved instrument response. ASCOT was built to address the existing need for observations in the gamma-ray energy range of 0.4 - 20 MeV. Operating stably throughout the mission, it reached an altitude of 120,000 ft and observed the Crab Nebula at MeV energies for ~5 hours. Built on the legacy of COMPTEL (onboard CGRO), along with the hardware advancement ASCOT also makes use of the Time-of-Flight (ToF) background rejection technique for effective imaging. Presented here is the Energy and ToF calibrated flight data with optimal data cuts (Earth Horizon Cut, Pulse Shape Discrimination Cut). The growth curves generated using this data from 5 to 100 g/cm2 of residual atmosphere in conjunction with the Monte Carlo simulations of the instrument response have been used to obtain the Cosmic Diffuse Gamma-ray (CDG) flux value of (1.28 ± 0.37)×10-5 photons/cm2/s/sr/keV for 0.4 – 0.7 MeV energy range. The 3σ upper limit for CDG flux is 1.8×10-5 photons/cm2/s/sr/keV for 0.7-1.5 MeV and 2×10-6 photons/cm2/s/sr/keV for 1.5-2.5 MeV. The analysis of the Crab Nebula from flight observation is underway
Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
NASA
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1866949
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-20-30199
Journal Information:
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, Journal Name: Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering Vol. 11444; ISSN 0277-786X
Publisher:
SPIECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
Astronomy
Balloon Instruments
Compton Telescopes
Gamma Rays
Scintillators
Silicon Photomultipliers