Microchannel plates for the UVCS and SUMER instruments on the SOHO satellite

Oswald H. W. Siegmund; Mark A. Gummin; Timothy Sasseen; Patrick N. Jelinsky; Geoffrey A. Gaines; Jeffrey S. Hull; Joseph M. Stock; Michael L. Edgar; Barry Y. Welsh; Sharon R. Jelinsky; John V. Vallerga

doi:10.1117/12.218388

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1 September 1995 Microchannel plates for the UVCS and SUMER instruments on the SOHO satellite

Oswald H. W. Siegmund, Mark A. Gummin, Timothy Sasseen, Patrick N. Jelinsky, Geoffrey A. Gaines, Jeffrey S. Hull, Joseph M. Stock, Michael L. Edgar, Barry Y. Welsh, Sharon R. Jelinsky, John V. Vallerga

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Proceedings Volume 2518, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy VI; (1995) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.218388
Event: SPIE's 1995 International Symposium on Optical Science, Engineering, and Instrumentation, 1995, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The microchannel plates for the detectors in the SUMER and UVCS instruments aboard the Solar Orbiting Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission to be launched in late 1995 are described. A low resistance Z stack of microchannel plates (MCPs) is employed in a detector format of 27 mm multiplied by 10 mm using a multilayer cross delay line anode (XDL) with 1024 by 360 digitized pixels. The MCP stacks provide gains of greater than 2 multiplied by 10⁷ with good pulse height distributions (as low as 25% FWHM) under uniform flood illumination. Background rates of approximately equals 0.6 event cm^-2 sec^-1 are obtained for this configuration. Local counting rates up to approximately equals 800 events/pixel/sec have been achieved with little drop of the MCP gain. MCP preconditioning results are discussed, showing that some MCP stacks fail to have gain decreases when subjected to a high flux UV scrub. Also, although the bare MCP quantum efficiencies are close to those expected (approximately equals 10%), we found that the long wavelength response of KBr photocathodes could be substantially enhanced by the MCP scrubbing process. Flat field images are characterized by a low level of MCP fixed pattern noise and are stable. Preliminary calibration results for the instruments are shown.

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Oswald H. W. Siegmund, Mark A. Gummin, Timothy Sasseen, Patrick N. Jelinsky, Geoffrey A. Gaines, Jeffrey S. Hull, Joseph M. Stock, Michael L. Edgar, Barry Y. Welsh, Sharon R. Jelinsky, and John V. Vallerga "Microchannel plates for the UVCS and SUMER instruments on the SOHO satellite", Proc. SPIE 2518, EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Instrumentation for Astronomy VI, (1 September 1995); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.218388

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