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Description
HEAO 1 (High Energy Astronomical Observatory) is a spinning survey mission X-ray satellite. It launched 12 August 1977 and was in operation until 9 January 1979. HEAO-1 rotated once per 30 minutes about the Earth-Sun line. In this manner, the instruments scanned a great circle in the sky that lay 90 degrees from the sun. A given source near the ecliptic was viewed for a few days while sources near the ecliptic pole were scanned nearly continuously during the entire mission. The satellite has limited pointing capability that was used to produce this data, giving continuous coverage of selected sources. The pointings began about 100 days into the mission. The A1 instrument, also known as the NRL Large Area Sky Survey Experiment (LASS) covered the energy range 0.25 to 25.0 keV. The experiment consisted of seven detectors, six mounted on the -Y side of the spacecraft, the seventh on the +Y side. Two detectors, with a FWHM of 1 deg x 0.5 deg and open area of 1350 cm2 were tilted a third of a degree either towards or away from the Z (Sun-pointed) four other -Y side detectors has a FWHM of 1 deg x 4 deg and an open area of 1650 cm2. The single +Y detector has a FWHM of 2 deg x 8 deg and an open area of 1900 cm2. The experiment had sufficient sensitivity to detect sources as faint as as 0.25 uJy at 5 keV for sources with a Crab-like spectrum. Data was collected in either a 5 or a 320 millisecond timing resolution mode: Full sky coverage for both time resolutions was achieved before the mission's end. Wood et al. (1984) discuss the experiment and a catalog of sources in further detail. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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