SIMULATIONS OF HARD X-RAY IMAGING SPECTROSCOPY WITH THE HESSI ROTATING MODULATION COLLIMATORS


E. J. Schmahl, University of Maryland, Department of Astronomy

B.R. Dennis NASA/Goddard, Lab for Astronomy and Solar Physics

Presented at the AAS/SPD Meeting, June 1997, Montana State Univ.

The High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) has been funded as a Small Explorer to perform imaging spectroscopy of solar flares in the 3 keV - 10 MeV range. It will be a rotation modulation collimator (RMC) telescope with 9 collimators resolving angular scales from 2.3 to 189 arcseconds, capable of mapping flares anywhere on the Sun.
To prepare for this mission, we have performed simulations of the imaging capability of HESSI using the known parameters of its collimators and standard methods of RMC image reconstruction. One of the flare models used in the simulation is based on the HXT images of the "Masuda flare" shown in Figure 1 below.


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