The Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy Onboard the SATech-01 Satellite
Z. X. Ling, Xiaoqin Sun, C. Zhang, S. L. Sun, Ge Jin, S. N. Zhang, Xue Zhang, Jingyu Chang, Feng Chen, Y. F. Chen, Zhengwei Cheng, Wen Fu, Y. X. Han, Hui Li, J. F. Li, Yifan Li, Zilong Li, P. R. Liu, Yanhua Lv, Xinhua Ma, Yanjun Tang, Chuxuan Wang, Ronghuan Xie, Yun‐Shan Xue, A. L. Yan, Qizhou Zhang, Chongyun Bao, Hongbo Cai, Haiyang Cheng, Chenzhou Cui, Y. F. Dai, Dongwei Fan, H. B. Hu, J. W. Hu, Ming‐Hsi Huang, Zhiyan Jia, Chichuan Jin, Dongyue Li, J. Q. Li, He‐Yang Liu, Mingjun Liu, Yang Liu, Haiwu Pan, Yanmei Qiu, M. Sugizaki, Hui Sun, W. X. Wang, Y. L. Wang, Qing Yang Steve Wu, Xiaolong Xu, Yunfei Xu, Haining Yang, X. Yang, Banglin Zhang, Mei Zhang, W. D. Zhang, Zhaoyi Zhang, Daming Zhao, Xiaoqing Cong, Bin Jiang, Longhui Li, Xuerui Qiu, Jianning Sun, D. T. Su, Jing Wang, C. Y. Wu, Zijian Xu, Xiaoming Yang, S. K. Zhang, Zhaoyi Zhang, Na Zhang, Yongfa Zhu, Huiyong Ban, Xupeng Bi, Zhengyang Cai, Wen Chen, Xiangcheng Chen, Yulong Chen, Yuzhu Cui, Xiulan Duan, Zhenggong Feng, Yu Gao, Junjun He, Tao He, J. J. Huang, F. Li, J. S. Li, Tiejian Li, Tingting Li, Haiqing Liu, Haibo Liu, R. Liu, Shuo Liu, Nan Meng, Qi Shi, Ao Sun, Y. M. Wang, Y. B. Wang, Haoyu Wu, Dapeng Xu
Abstract
Abstract The Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy (LEIA), a pathfinder of the Wide-field X-ray Telescope of the Einstein Probe mission, was successfully launched onboard the SATech-01 satellite of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on 2022 July 27. In this paper, we introduce the design and on-ground test results of the LEIA instrument. Using state-of-the-art Micro-Pore Optics (MPO), a wide field of view of 346 square degrees (18.°6 × 18.°6) of the X-ray imager is realized. An optical assembly composed of 36 MPO chips is used to focus incident X-ray photons, and four large-format complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors, each of size 6 cm × 6 cm, are used as the focal plane detectors. The instrument has an angular resolution of 4′–8′ (in terms of FWHM) for the central focal spot of the point-spread function, and an effective area of 2–3 cm 2 at 1 keV in essentially all the directions within the field of view. The detection passband is 0.5–4 keV in soft X-rays and the sensitivity is 2–3 × 10 −11 erg s −1 cm −2 (about 1 milliCrab) with a 1000 s observation. The total weight of LEIA is 56 kg and the power is 85 W. The satellite, with a design lifetime of 2 yr, operates in a Sun-synchronous orbit of 500 km with an orbital period of 95 minutes. LEIA is paving the way for future missions by verifying in flight the technologies of both novel focusing imaging optics and CMOS sensors for X-ray observation, and by optimizing the working setups of the instrumental parameters. In addition, LEIA is able to carry out scientific observations to find new transients and to monitor known sources in the soft X-ray band, albeit with limited useful observing time available.