Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Nuclear Compton Telescope

Telescope to observe Gamma-ray sky From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Remove ads

The Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) is a balloon-borne Compton telescope to observe the gamma-ray sky in the energy range from a few hundred keV to several MeV. Its main goals are to improve the understanding of Galactic nucleosynthesis, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, black holes, and more.[1]

Instrumentation

The Compton telescope uses an array of twelve Germanium detectors with high spectral resolution to detect gamma rays. On its bottom half the detector is surrounded by a Bismuth germanate scintillator to shield it from atmospheric gamma rays. The telescope has an overall field of view (FOV) of 25% of the sky.

Flights

Since low-to-medium-energy gamma rays are only detectable from above the atmosphere, NCT is launched with a large 1-million m3 (35-million cu ft) Helium balloon into the stratosphere. So far NCT had two successful and one unsuccessful balloon campaigns:

Remove ads

References

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads