[FPSPACE] Black Hole Finder Probe

[LARRY KLAES]

Paper: astro-ph/0508313
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 20:45:28 GMT (606kb)

Title: CASTER - a concept for a Black Hole Finder Probe based on the use of 
new
scintillator technologies

Authors: Mark L. McConnell, Peter F. Bloser, Gary Case, Michael Cherry, 
James
Cravens, T. Gregory Guzik, Kevin Hurley, R. Marc Kippen, John Macri, Richard
S. Miller, William Paciesas, James M. Ryan, Bradley Schaefer, J. Gregory
Stacy, W. Thomas Vestrand and John P. Wefel

Comments: 12 pages; conference paper presented at the SPIE conference "UV,
X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Space Instrumentation for Astronomy XIV." To be
published in SPIE Conference Proceedings, vol. 5898

\\
The primary scientific mission of the Black Hole Finder Probe (BHFP), part 
of
the NASA Beyond Einstein program, is to survey the local Universe for black
holes over a wide range of mass and accretion rate. One approach to such a
survey is a hard X-ray coded-aperture imaging mission operating in the 
10--600
keV energy band, a spectral range that is considered to be especially useful 
in
the detection of black hole sources. The development of new inorganic
scintillator materials provides improved performance (for example, with 
regards
to energy resolution and timing) that is well suited to the BHFP science
requirements. Detection planes formed with these materials coupled with a 
new
generation of readout devices represent a major advancement in the 
performance
capabilities of scintillator-based gamma cameras. Here, we discuss the Coded
Aperture Survey Telescope for Energetic Radiation (CASTER), a concept that
represents a BHFP based on the use of the latest scintillator technology.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0508313 , 606kb)