The upcoming long duration balloon flight of the Nuclear Compton Telescope

• Main Authors: Bandstra, Mark E., Bellm, Eric, Boggs, Steven E., Bowen, Jason D., Perez-Becker, Daniel, Wunderer, Cornelia B., Zoglauer, Andreas, Amman, Mark, Luke, Paul N., Chang, Hsiang-Kuang, Chiu, Jeng-Lun, Liang, Jau-Shian, Chang, Yuan-Hann, Liu, Zong-Kai, Lin, Chih-Hsun, Huang, Minghuey A., Jean, Pierre
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Amorphous materials; Electronic equipment testing; Germanium; Instruments; Optical design; Polarization; Position sensitive particle detectors; Prototypes; Strips; Telescopes
• ISSN: 1082-3654; 2577-0829
• DOI: 10.1109/NSSMIC.2007.4436668

The nuclear Compton telescope (NCT) is a balloon- borne soft gamma-ray (0.2 MeV-10 MeV) telescope designed to study astrophysical sources of nuclear line emission and polarization. A prototype instrument was successfully launched from Fort Sumner, New Mexico on June 1, 2005. The NCT prototype consisted of two 3D position sensitive high-purity germanium strip detectors (GeDs) fabricated with amorphous Ge contacts. We are currently working toward two balloon flights: another conventional balloon flight from Fort Sumner, New Mexico in September 2008, and a long-duration balloon flight (LDBF) from Alice Springs, Australia in December 2009. The NCT instrument is being upgraded to include all twelve planned GeDs. The electronics for all twelve detectors have been redesigned for smaller size, lower power consumption, and lower noise, and are now being fabricated and tested. Here we present our current progress in preparing for the flights.