Another view
gzipped Postscript version
(large).
One of the HEXTE clusters on a vibration testing platform at Wyle Laboratories, complete with its rocking mechanism.
Photo credit: Bob HoweTop view of a HEXTE cluster, with its 4 phoswich detector modules in place. Visible are the collimators, each with their own gain control/calibration sources installed in the detector's field of view. Each cylindrical collimator has a diameter of about 7.2 in.
Photo credit: Bob Howe``Pictured on the cover is Dr. Richard Rothschild with one of the clusters of X-ray detector instruments designed, fabricated and tested at UCSD's Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences for NASA's X-ray Timing Explorer. The instrument, along with others developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will provide important information on the nature of X-ray emitting objects, such as black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs. The products of stellar evolution, these extremeley dense objects exhibit enormous gravitational fields and are ultimately responsible for the generation of X-rays and gamma rays. Scheduled for launch in August 1995, the X-ray Timing Explorer will exploit the temporal variability of these stars on time scales from millionths of a second to months to explain how matter is transferred from one star to its binary companion, how this matter interacts with the intense magnetic fields present, and how X-ray beams are formed. The mission will also provide scientists with new understanding of the dynamics and life history of X-ray emitting objects.''