Design
The basic design of EGRET was basically a chamber filled with a special type of metal, a sensor at the bottom of the chamber to capture and record gamma rays, and finally a protective covering over the entire instrument. The chamber would manipulate the gamma ray into a way that it could be recorded. The sensor would capture and record the characteristics of the gamma ray. Finally the protective covering would block out any unwanted energy rays.
With the purpose of detecting individual gamma rays ranging from 30 MeV to 30 GeV, EGRET was equipped with a plastic scintillator anti-coincidence dome, spark chamber, and calorimeter. Starting from the outside of the telescope, scientists covered EGRET with a plastic scintillator anti-coincidence dome. The dome acted as a shield, blocking any unwanted energy waves from entering the telescope and skewing the data. To actually create recordable, usable data, scientists used a process called electron-positron pair production, which is creating an electron and positron simultaneously near a nucleus or subatomic particle. In order to induce this process, scientists assembled a multilevel thin-plate spark chamber within the telescope. A spark chamber is basically a chamber with many plates of metal and gases such as helium or neon. Finally to record the data from the electron or positron about the gamma ray, scientists equipped EGRET with a thallium-activated sodium iodide (NaI(Tl)) calorimeter at its base. The calorimeter captured the resolution of the gamma rays that entered EGRET.
Read more about this topic: Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ’s sake not black—
nor white either—and not polished!
Let it be weathered—like a farm wagon—”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)