The Broad Band X-ray Telescope (BBXRT) was flown on the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-35) as part of the ASTRO-1 payload. It was designed and built at the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at NASA/GSFC.
BBXRT was the first focusing X-ray telescope operating over a broad energy range with a moderate energy resolution.
Mission Characteristics
Lifetime
2–11 Dec 1990
Special Features
Instrument in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Columbia
Payload
Instrument
Characteristic
Details
Solid State Spectrometer
Energy Range
0.3–12 keV
Effective Area
765 cm2 at 1.5 keV 300 cm2 at 7 kev
Field of View
17.4′ diameter; 4′ central pixel diameter
Energy Resolution
90 eV at 1 keV 150 eV at 6 keV
Two co-aligned telescopes, each with a segmented Si(Li) solid state spectrometer (detector A and B) composite of five pixels.
Science Highlights
Resolved iron K line in the binaries Cen X-3 and Cyg X-2
Detected evidence of line broadening in NGC 4151
Studied cooling flow in clusters
Archive
The HEASARC hosts spectra, lightcurves, and raw data
