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XSPECT ○´｜Definition｜1st｜20260906193410-00-⌔
XPoSat - Wikipedia#X-ray_Spectroscopy_and_Timing_(XSPECT)
X-ray Spectroscopy and Timing (XSPECT)
XSPECT is the secondary payload on XPoSat. It measures spectroscopic and timing information of soft X-rays generated by celestial X-ray sources.12 XSPECT is designed to pursue timing studies of soft X-rays (0.8-15 keV),3 complementary to what the Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) does at high energies on AstroSat, while simultaneously providing adequate spectral resolution in the 0.8-15 keV band. It has an energy resolution of <200 eV at 5.9 keV (-20 °C) and a timing resolution of ~2 msec. It has been developed by the Space Astronomy Group of the U R Rao Satellite Centre.
The detector achieves modest effective area without the use of focusing optics using the large area Swept Charge Devices (SCD), a variant of X-ray charge-coupled Devices (CCDs). SCDs permit fast readouts (10–100 kHz) and moderately good spectral resolution at the cost of a position sensitivity. These devices are unique in requiring very benign cooling requirement (requiring only passive cooling) unlike traditional X-ray CCDs.
Key science objectives of XSPECT include understanding long-term behavior of X-ray sources through correlation of timing characteristics with spectral state changes and emission line variations.
Printed 2026-09-06.
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Link to original Footnotes
“Government of India, Department of Space, Annual Report 2020” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 February 2020. ↩
Mandal, Annu (22 December 2023). “ISRO to launch of XPoSat mission on January 1, 2024, to study polarisation along with NASA”. Financialexpress. Retrieved 25 December 2023. ↩
Ghosh, Sahana (11 September 2023). “India to launch world’s second X-ray polarimetry space observatory”. Nature India. doi:10.1038/d44151-023-00132-x. ↩
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