Sounding rocket flight 36.093UH was launched successfully from White Sands Missile Range New Mexico on May 2, 1997. The launch was a collaborative effort between the Sounding Rocket Program at Penn State X-ray Astronomy and support personnel at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility The target for this flight was the North Polar Spur, an enhanced feature prominent in the 3/4 KeV band of the Soft X-ray Background. Our objective was to obtain an X-ray spectrum of the Spur with which to measure the temperature and chemical composition of the hot gas in order to better understand its origin. The data were collected using an advanced CCD (Charged Coupled Device) optimized for the detection of soft X-rays. The CCD, developed at Leicester University and manufactured by EEV, utilizes a thinned-gate structure to increase the quantum efficiency for soft X-ray photons, i.e. below 400eV. A secondary objective of this flight was to test this new CCD. This is the third flight of this payload/detector, having previously observed the galactic center(36.106) and, due to a pointing error, an unenhanced portion of the Soft X-ray background in Draco(36.092). This flight was prepped and analyzed by PSU graduate student Laura Cawley and the X-ray Astronomy group.

Penn State's High Energy Astrophysics group web pages are maintained by Scott Koch.
Last update:  December 3, 1998