Testing and Calibrating an Off-plane Diffraction Mount for Soft X-ray Analysis

Overview

Objectives/Goals The goal of this project is to modify and make use of a diffraction grating Belly Band with the original purpose of mounting and calibrating diffraction gratings, which focuses X-rays onto a CCD in a very precise arc for image analysis. If successful, this device may be used as part of an actual sub-orbital rocket payload to collect images of X-rays for analysis in launches. Off-plane diffraction gratings have been used in X-ray spectrometers on the sub-orbital rockets in the NASA missions CyXESS and EXOS, successfully capturing high-resolution data from soft (low-energy) X-rays originating from supernova remnants in the Cygnus Loop. Methods/Materials First I decided the appropriate substitutions to be made for each component, and designed, built, and set up the experiment. Then to insure the best result, I had to develop a quick algorithm for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data, as by the virtue of the experiment, real-time feedback was of the utmost importance. Results Using a 3D histogram, I found that the Belly Band was an accurate grating mount to an accuracy of 2-3 pixels, a tolerance of only 0.019## on the angle of the grating, well within our 5## goal. We found that the Belly Band was not an effective precise grating calibrater, because even the tiny 1/256 inch set screws were too cumbersome for this design. Conclusions/Discussion In this experiment, I developed methods and algorithms that set a precedence and foundation for future, follow-up experiments to fine-tune the Belly Band. Furthermore, I proved that the concept of this experiment is viable, and once this Belly Band is fully fine-tuned it will be integrated on an actual suborbital#s payload scheduled to launch within the next two years.

Competition history

• CSEF 2012 Physics & Astronomy · Entry S1812

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Physics and Astronomy projects
• CSEF Physics and Astronomy projects
• Every CSEF 2012 project