Detecting EUV transients in near real time with ALEXIS
The Array of Low Energy X-ray Imaging Sensors (ALEXIS) experiment consists of a mini-satellite containing six wide angle EUV/ultrasoft X-ray telescopes (Priedhorsky et al. 1989, and Bloch et al. 1994). Its scientific objective is to map out the sky in three narrow ({Delta}E/E {approx} 5%) bandpasses around 66, 71, and 93 eV. During each 50 second satellite rotation period the six telescopes, each with a 30{degrees} field, of:view and a spatial resolution of 0.25{degrees}, scan most of the antisolar hemisphere of the sky. The project is a collaborative effort between Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and the University of California-Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. It is controlled entirely from a small ground station located at Los Alamos. The mission was launched on a Pegasus Air Launched Vehicle on April 25, 1993. An incident at launch delayed our ability to properly analyze the data until November of 1994. In January of 1995, we brought on line automated software to routinely carry out the transient search. After the data is downlinked from the satellite, the software processes and transforms it into sky maps that are automatically searched for new sources. The software then sends the results of these searches by e-mail to the science team within two hours of the downlink. This system has successfully detected the Cataclysmic Variables VW Hyi, U Gem and AR UMa in outburst, and has detected at least two unidentified short duration EUV transients (Roussel-Dupre et al 1995, Roussel-Dupre 1995).
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-36
- OSTI ID:
- 208371
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-95-4450; CONF-9510286-2; ON: DE96006325
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 5. annual conference on astronomical data analysis software and systems, Tucson, AZ (United States), 22-25 Oct 1995; Other Information: PBD: [1995]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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