Upgrade of the thirty-meter x-ray pencil beam line at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science

Abstract

The thirty-meter X-ray pencil beam line at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) was utilized for ground-based calibrations of X-ray telescopes (XRTs) onboard the ASTRO-D, the ASTRO-E and the ASTRO- E2 satellites. Recent upsizing or downsizing of XRT required upgrade of the ISAS beam line. We replaced a vacuum chamber in which the stages had been installed by a new cylindrical chamber whose diameter and length are 1.8 m and 11.3 m, respectively. Stages on which a telescope and detectors had been mounted were also replaced. At same time, a new CCD consists of 1240×1152 pixels whose size are 22.5×22.5 μm was introduced. The detector stage can be moved along the X-ray beam in the vacuum chamber, which allows us to change the distance between the sample and the detectors from 0.7 m to 9 m. The two stages can move in at least 500×500 mm² of square in the plane normal to the X-ray beam. The pitching of some moving axes are measured at 60 arcsec at most. The others are no more than about 30 arcsec. From April 2013, the ASTRO-H Soft X-ray telescopes (SXTs) have been calibrated at the new ISAS beam line.