The OSO-7 Satellite


photo of OSO-7 OSO-7, like the other Orbiting Solar Observatory missions, was primarily a solar observatory designed to point a battery of UV and X-ray telescopes at the Sun from a platform mounted on a cylindrical wheel. The detectors for observing cosmic X-ray sources were the X-ray proportional counters, built by MIT, the hard X-ray telescope by UC San Diego and the Gamma Ray Monitor by the University of New Hampshire.

Mission Characteristics

* Lifetime : 29 September 1971 - 9 July 1974
* Energy Range : 1 keV - 10 MeV
* Payload :
  • 2 banks of Proportional Counters: 1 - 60 keV, FOV 1° & 3°
  • Hard X-ray telescope: 7 - 550 keV, FOV 6.5°, effective area ~64 cm2
  • Gamma ray Monitor: 300 keV - 10 MeV, resolution 7.8% at 662 keV
* Science Highlights:
  • X-ray All-sky survey
  • Discovery of the 9-day periodicity in Vela X-1 which led to its optical identification as a HMXRB.
  • Gamma-ray observations of solar flares
* Archive: No data available at the HEASARC.
NSSDC holds the OSO-7 data in their native format.
[OSO-7 Home] [About OSO-7] [Gallery] [Publications]

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Page authors: Lorella Angelini Jesse Allen
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Last modified: Friday, 25-Sep-2020 16:48:24 EDT