Caltech Gamma Ray Imaging Payload (GRIP)

The Gamma Ray Imaging Payload (GRIP2) is a balloon borne coded-aperture telescope designed for imaging observations of galactic and extragalactic gamma-ray sources. GRIP2 incoorporates a rotating hexagonal coded aperture mask and a 70 cm diameter NaI(Ti)/CsI(Na) phoswich detector. It is optimized for imaging observations in the energy range 30 keV to 500 keV, with usable sensitivity to 2 MeV. The instrument was most recently flown from Alice Springs, NT Australia in early October 1995.

People

• Tom Prince
• Fiona Harrison
• Steve Schindler
• Rick Cook
• Stephane Corbel
• Jill Burnham
• Brian Matthews
• Derrick Key

GRIP-2 Data Analysis/Results

• GRIP-2: A Sensitive Balloon-borne Imaging Gamma-ray Telescope (7 Mb) submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods A ( 500 Kb gzip format)
• Multiwavelength Observations of the Black Hole Candidate 1E 1740.7-2942 Thesis, William Heindl, 1994

Coded-Aperture Imaging

• The Photon Statistics of Point Source Correlation Images in Coded Aperture Imaging Mark Finger, Rick Cook, and Thomas Prince, 1995.
• The Photon Statistics of Point Source Correlation Images in Coded Aperture Imaging Mark Finger, Rick Cook, and Thomas Prince, unpublished manuscript, 1995.
• Useful Classes of Redundant Arrays for Imaging Applications Mark Finger and Thomas Prince, 1995.

Alice V Campaign Galactic Plane Image

30 - 75 keV 75 - 150 keV

GRIP-2 Detector

The GRIP-2 detector is a large-area imaging phoswich detector, and provides a substantial collecting area and sensitivity improvement over the original GRIP detector. The NaI(Ti)/CsI(Na) detector is optimized for imaging observations in the energy range 30 keV to 600 keV, with usable sensitivity up to 2 MeV. The 1.5 cm thick NaI(Ti) detection element is fabricated from a single crystal, while the CsI(Na) Compton shield backing the NaI is composed of a mosaic of hexagonal scintillator pieces. The detector is instrumented with 119 photomultiplier tubes (Hamamatsu 2.5" diameter R1410) which view the scintillator through a lead glass optical window. The lead glass reduces the rate of low energy events in the CsI, easing the requirements on the electronics for phoswich discrimination. The PMT's are mechanically constrained against the lead glass window by a rigid aluminium strong back structure, assuring a uniform optical coupling between the PMT's and the glass. Sixty-nine light fibers, each coupled to an individual LED are symmetrically located in the strong back. These provide a programmed sequence of individual light pulses over the full active area of the detector for both ground and in-flight calibration of the instrument.

Related Pages

• Caltech High Energy Astrophysics
• Caltech Space Radiation Lab
• NSBF The National Scientific Balloon Facility
• EXIST
• INTEGRAL
• Coded Aperture Imaging
• BATSE
• SIGMA

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