AGILE has been providing continous monitoring of the Galactic plane in its three years of operation. Thanks to its sensitivity at energies near 100 MeV, AGILE has observed variability and transient behaviour in a number of sources. Simultaneous hard-X-ray coverage, rapid alerts to the astronomical community, and multiwavelength campaigns have provided identifications for some of these sources and placed constraints on others. We provide an overview of these observations and their possible counterparts, including microquasars and colliding wind binaries.

Transient (computer programming)

Galactic plane

10.1393/ncc/i2011-10897-6

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AGILE detects enhanced gamma-ray emission from the region of the Narrow-Line Sy1 PMN J0948+0022

The astronomer's telegram (2011)

F. Lucarelli G. Piano F. Verrecchia S. Vercellone M. Tavani

Line (geometry)

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Strong gravity studies with the Large Observatory For X-ray Timing (LOFT)

Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana (2012)

E. Del Monte I. Donnarumma

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Concept for an innovative wide-field camera for x-ray astronomy

Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE (2010)

R. Campana M. Feroci A. Vacchi C. Labanti G. Zampa

The use of large-area, fine-pitch Silicon detectors has demonstrated the feasibility of wide field imaging experiments requesting very low resources in terms of weight, volume, power and costs. The flying SuperAGILE instrument is the first such experiment, adopting large-area Silicon microstrip detectors coupled to one-dimensional coded masks. With less than 10 kg, 12 watt and 0.04 m³ it provides 6-arcmin angular resolution over >1 sr field of view. Due to odd operational conditions, SuperAGILE works in the unfavourable energy range 18-60 keV. In this paper we show that the use of innovative large-area Silicon Drift Detectors allows to design experiments with arcmin-imaging performance over steradian-wide fields of view, in the energy range 2-50 keV, with spectroscopic resolution in the range of 300-570 eV (FWHM) at room temperature. We will show the concept, design and readiness of such an experiment, supported by laboratory tests on large-area prototypes. We will quantify the expected performance in potential applications on X-ray astronomy missions for the observation and long-term monitoring of Galactic and extragalactic transient and persistent sources, as well as localization and fine study of the prompt emission of Gamma-Ray Bursts in soft X-rays.

X-Ray Astronomy

Field of view

X-ray detector

X-ray optics

10.1117/12.857254

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Citations (2)

GRB 080723B: detection and localization by SuperAGILE.

GRB Coordinates Network (2008)

E. Del Monte I. Donnarumma Y. Evangelista M. Feroci E. Costa

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The CUbesat Solar Polarimeter (CUSP) mission overview

Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2022: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray (2024)

Sergio Fabiani E. Del Monte Ilaria Baffo Sergio Bonomo Daniele Brienza

The CUbesat Solar Polarimeter (CUSP) project is a future CubeSat mission orbiting the Earth aimed to measure the linear polarization of solar flares in the hard X-ray band, by means of a Compton scattering polarimeter. CUSP will allow us to study the magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration in the flaring magnetic structures of our star. The project is in the framework of the Italian Space Agency Alcor Program, which aims to develop new CubeSat missions. CUSP is approved for a Phase B study that will last for 12 months, starting in mid-2024. We report on the current status of the CUSP mission project as the outcome of the Phase A.

CubeSat

Polarimeter

10.1117/12.3018158

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SuperAGILE: an X-Ray monitor for a gamma mission

E. Del Monte

The Ph.D. Thesis, performed at IASF CNR/INAF in Rome under the supervision of dr. Enrico Costa, contains the study of the scientific performances of the SuperAGILE instrument. SuperAGILE is the X-ray monitor of AGILE, satellite-borne mission of ASI whose payload is composed of two instruments, sensitive in the 15-40 keV and 30 MeV-50 GeV energy bands respectively, and whose launch is foreseen in late 2005. SuperAGILE is a coded aperture instrument with silicon microstrip detector and tungsten coded mask. Topic of my Ph.D. Thesis is the study of the SuperAGILE scientific performances and criticalities: measurement of the performances uniformity of the XAA1.2 front-end electronic circuit, of its thermal stability and of its stability toward supply voltage variations, study of the cosmic rays interaction in the front-end circuit with experimental measurements and estimate of the expected flux in orbit, measurements of the scientific performances of the SuperAGILE flight model and finally study of the impact of the threshold non uniformity on the images. The measurements of the performances uniformity of the XAA1.2, of its thermal stability (between –20° C and +40° C) and of the stability toward supply voltage variations are performed using a dedicated acquisition board feeding the chip with a pulse generator contained in the board. From the measurements a variation of the XAA1.2 address signals (used to reconstruct the images of the sources in the Sky) on the 10° C scale is found. The study of the effect of the cosmic rays interaction in the XAA1.2 chip, that is not designed as a radiation hard component for space applications, concerns the latch-up (sudden increase of the supply currents that can damage the chip due to overheating) and the SEU (bit flip in the memory registers with loss of chip configuration) and the effect of the absorbed dose on the linearity and power consumption. The measurements have been performed with ions irradiation (from 16O to 197Au) at the SIRAD facility of the Tandem accelerator in the Laboratori Nazionali INFN in Legnaro near Padova. With different values of LET, a measure of the energy released per unit length by the charged particles in silicon, the latch-up and SEU cross-section values are measured. During the irradiation linearity measurements using the test pulse generator are performed in order to study the total dose effect. Evaluating the ions flux in orbit with the CREME96 code and using an approximated model to take into account the proton spallation, I have found that the expected latch-up and SEU rate in orbit is less than one event during all the AGILE duration and that the total dose effect is negligible. My Ph.D. Thesis contains also the characterization of the SuperAGILE flight model, performed measuring the linearity and the noise of the front-end electronics after the XAA1.2 integration, after the burn-in procedure (by supplying the board in nominal configuration inside an oven at 75° C for 240 hours long) and after the detector integration. From the measurements I have found no performance degradation after the burn-in procedure. After the detector integration the noise in the front-end electronic is about 7.5 keV FWHM while the energy threshold is about 19 keV. The noise in the front-end electronic has been measured also using X-ray sources (241Am, 57Co, 109Cd and Ba fluorescence lines) and the measured values are in good agreement with the test pulse measurements. My Thesis contains also the discussion of the most important topics in the development of data analysis programs. Because of the big number of the SuperAGILE detector pixels, linearity and noise (using both test pulse generator and X-ray sources) need to be estimated automatically, without requiring the user to provide specific parameters. Finally, the Thesis contains an estimate of the threshold non uniformity on SuperAGILE images by means of background detector images generation applying different non uniformity threshold models. By decoding the resulting Sky images I have found that, while the nominal threshold uniformity does not allow to observe faint sources with exposures of order 106 s, the uniformity level obtained with the digital fine threshold equalization (3 bit DAC), allows expose for 106 s long.

Payload (computing)

Aperture (computer memory)

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AGILE detection of a high Galactic latitude gamma-ray source

ATel (2012)

M. Cardillo F. Verrecchia A. Bulgarelli C. Pittori M. Tavani

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AGILE detects enhanced gamma-ray emission from BZQ J1512-0905 (PKS1510-089)

The astronomer's telegram (2011)

I. Donnarumma F. Lucarelli S. Vercellone M. Tavani A. Bulgarelli

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AGILE detection of GeV $\sf$γ-ray emission from the SNR W28

Astronomy and Astrophysics (2010)

A. Giuliani M. Tavani A. Bulgarelli E. Striani S. Sabatini

Supernova remnants (SNRs) are believed to be the main sources of Galactic cosmic rays. Molecular clouds associated with SNRs can produce gamma-ray emission through the interaction of accelerated particles with the concentrated gas. The middle aged SNR W28, for its associated system of dense molecular clouds, provides an excellent opportunity to test this hypothesis. We present the AGILE/GRID observations of SNR W28, and compare them with observations at other wavelengths (TeV and 12CO J=1-->0 molecular line emission). The gamma-ray flux detected by AGILE from the dominant source associated with W28 is (14 +- 5) 10^-8 ph cm^-2 s^-1 for E > 400 MeV. This source is positionally well correlated with the TeV emission observed by the HESS telescope. The local variations of the GeV to TeV flux ratio suggest a difference between the CR spectra of the north-west and south molecular cloud complexes. A model based on a hadronic-induced interaction and diffusion with two molecular clouds at different distances from the W28 shell can explain both the morphological and spectral features observed by AGILE in the MeV-GeV energy range and by the HESS telescope in the TeV energy range. The combined set of AGILE and H.E.S.S. data strongly support a hadronic model for the gamma-ray production in W28.

Line (geometry)

10.1051/0004-6361/201014256

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Citations (83)