The All-sky Medium Energy Gamma-ray Observatory eXplorer (AMEGO-X) is designed to identify and characterize gamma rays from extreme explosions and accelerators. The main science themes include supermassive black holes and their connections to neutrinos and cosmic rays; binary neutron star mergers and the relativistic jets they produce; cosmic ray particle acceleration sources including galactic supernovae; continuous monitoring of other astrophysical events and sources over the full sky in this important energy range. AMEGO-X will probe the medium energy gamma-ray band using a single instrument with sensitivity up to an order of magnitude greater than previous telescopes in the energy range 100 keV to 1 GeV that can be only realized in space. During its 3-year baseline mission, AMEGO-X will observe nearly the entire sky every two orbits, building up a sensitive all-sky map of gamma-ray sources and emissions. AMEGO-X was submitted in the recent 2021 NASA MIDEX announcement of opportunity.
In this paper we describe ProtoGECCO–a prototype instrument for the Galactic Explorer with a Coded aperture mask and Compton Telescope (GECCO). ProtoGECCO is comprised of two main imaging calorimeters. The top calorimeter is an array of cadmium zinc telluride (CZT); the bottom calorimeter is an array of high-light yield Gd3Al2Ga3O12:Ce (GAGG) fingers with silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) readout. The calorimeters are surrounded by a thallium-doped cesium iodide (CsI:Tl) active shield. ProtoGECCO employs the techniques of both coded aperture imaging and a Compton telescope. The main goals of the prototype are to further develop the instrument technology, thereby raising the technical readiness level (TRL), and to fly on a high-altitude balloon from Fort Sumner, NM. The results of this work are directly applicable to future space instruments that require detectors with large area; excellent spatial, energy, and angular resolution; and high detection efficiency. Such future missions will address problems in the MeV domain of gamma-ray astronomy—one of the most underexplored windows on the universe.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.