Soft X-ray in-flight calibration of the ROSAT PSPC

Abstract

We present an in-flight calibration of the ROSAT PSPC using the incident spectra of the hot white dwarf HZ43 and the polar AM Her. We derive an absolute flux calibration of the PSPC using the accurately known soft X-ray spectrum of HZ43. Corrections to the PSPC response matrix are derived from a comparison of predicted and observed PSPC spectra of HZ43, supplemented by results for AM Her. The calibration of the PSPC for photon energies E < 0.28 keV is found to be accurate to better than 5% refuting earlier reports of a major miscalibration. Our corrections to the detector response matrices remove systematic residuals in the pulse height spectra of soft sources.

arXiv comment3 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

References in corpus (1)

• Establishing HZ43 A, Sirius B, and RX J185635-3754 as soft X-ray standards: a cross-calibration between the Chandra LETG+HRC-S, the EUVE spectrometer, and the ROSAT PSPC

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• The Simultaneous Optical-to-X-ray Spectral Energy Distribution of Soft X-ray Selected AGN observed by Swift
• X-ray Substructure Studies of Four Galaxy Clusters using XMM-Newton Data
• A new soft X-ray spectral model for polars with an application to AM Herculis
• Soft X-ray spectral variability of AM Herculis
• X-ray spectroscopy of Abell S1101 with Chandra, XMM-Newton and ROSAT: band-pass dependence of he temperature profile and soft excess emission