An X-ray imager based on silicon microstrip detector and coded mask

SuperAGILE is the X-ray monitor of AGILE, a satellite mission for gamma-ray astronomy, and it is the first X-ray imaging instrument based on the technology of the silicon microstrip detectors combined with a coded aperture imaging technique. The SuperAGILE detection plane is composed of four 1-D silicon microstrip detector modules, mechanically coupled to tungsten coded mask units. The detector strips are separately and individually connected to the input analogue channels of the front-end electronics, composed of low-noise and low-power consumption VLSI ASIC chips. SuperAGILE can produce 1-D images with 6 arcmin angular resolution and similar to 2-3 arcmin localisation capability, for intense sources, in a field of view composed of two orthogonal areas of 107 degrees x 68 degrees. The time resolution is 2 mu s, the overall dead time is similar to 5 mu s and the electronic noise is similar to 7.5 keV full-width at half-maximum. The resulting instrument is very compact (40 x 40 x 14 cm(3)), light (10 kg) and has low power consumption (12 W). AGILE is a mission of the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and its launch is planned in 2007 in a low equatorial Earth orbit. In this contribution we present SuperAGILE and discuss its performance and scientific objectives. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.