Timing Calibration of the NuSTAR X-Ray Telescope

Journal
Date Issued
2021
Author(s)
•
Markwardt, Craig B.
•
Grefenstette, Brian W.
•
Gotthelf, Eric V.
•
Kuiper, Lucien
•
Barret, Didier
•
Cook, W. Rick
•
Davis, Andrew
•
Fürst, Felix
•
Forster, Karl
•
Harrison, Fiona A.
•
Madsen, Kristin K.
•
Miyasaka, Hiromasa
•
Roberts, Bryce
•
Tomsick, John A.
•
Walton, Dominic J.
DOI
Abstract
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission is the first focusing X-ray telescope in the hard X-ray (3-79 keV) band. Among the phenomena that can be studied in this energy band, some require high time resolution and stability: rotation-powered and accreting millisecond pulsars, fast variability from black holes and neutron stars, X-ray bursts, and more. Moreover, a good alignment of the timestamps of X-ray photons to UTC is key for multi-instrument studies of fast astrophysical processes. In this paper, we describe the timing calibration of the NuSTAR mission. In particular, we present a method to correct the temperature-dependent frequency response of the on-board temperature-compensated crystal oscillator. Together with measurements of the spacecraft clock offsets obtained during downlinks passes, this allows a precise characterization of the behavior of the oscillator. The calibrated NuSTAR event timestamps for a typical observation are shown to be accurate to a precision of ∼65 μs.
Volume
908
Issue
2
Start page
184
Uri
Url
Issn Identifier
0004-637X
Ads BibCode
2021ApJ...908..184B
Rights
open.access
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