Measurement of background radiations and spectra of X-ray sources using low-cost stratospheric balloon missions

Abstract

In small balloon missions, some in situ radiation is added to the targeted strong persistent astronomical sources (such as, the Sun, Crab, Cygnus X-1, etc.) or transient sources, such as solar flares, gamma-ray bursts, etc., during their detection, i.e., the background radiation. For measurement and modeling of background radiation, we use the data of the low-cost, small, stratospheric, high-altitude balloon-borne missions conducted by Indian Centre for Space Physics. In this paper, we show several models to estimate the background counts where the strong X-ray sources are detected at the altitude range of ∼35–42 km even in the absence of onboard pointing system and severe atmospheric absorption. For all data analysis purposes, the photons detected in the detector are in the energy range of 10–80 keV. Moreover, we found that the observed data is within ±1σ of the calculated background model. Finally, using these background models, we estimate the spectra and luminosity of the Crab nebula and the black hole candidate Cygnus X-1, which agree with the previously published results.