Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer - Wikipedia#All-Sky_Monitor_(ASM)

All-Sky Monitor (ASM)

The All-Sky Monitor (ASM) provided all-sky X-ray coverage, to a sensitivity of a few percent of the Crab Nebula intensity in one day, in order to provide both flare alarms and long-term intensity records of celestial X-ray sources.1 The ASM consisted of three wide-angle shadow cameras equipped with proportional counters with a total collecting area of 90 cm (14 sq in). The instrumental properties were:23

  • Energy range: 2–12-keV;
  • Time resolution: observes 80% of the sky every 90 minutes;
  • Spatial resolution: 3’× 15’;
  • Number of shadow cameras: 3, each with 6° × 90° FoV;
  • Collecting area: 90 cm (14 sq in);
  • Detector: Xenon proportional counter, position-sensitive;
  • Sensitivity: 30 mCrab.

It was built by the CSR at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The principal investigator was Dr. Hale Bradt.

Printed 2026-09-08.

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Footnotes

  1. “Experiment: All-Sky Monitor (ASM)”. NASA. 28 October 2021. Retrieved 28 November 2021. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. ↩

  2. “All-Sky Monitor (ASM)”. Heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov. 4 February 2002. Retrieved 3 February 2012. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. ↩

  3. “The RXTE All Sky Monitor Data Products”. NASA. 26 August 1997. Retrieved 28 November 2021. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. ↩