Paper 13093-270
Paper 13093-270
Status of the Lunar Electromagnetic Monitor in X-rays (LEM-X)
20 June 2024 • 10:20 - 10:40 Japan Standard Time | Room G414/415, North - 4F
Abstract
The Lunar Electromagnetic Monitor in X-rays (LEM-X) is an imager for X-ray Astronomy to be installed on the surface of the Moon and is funded by the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in the framework of the Italian "Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR)". The building block of LEM-X is represented by a pair of coded aperture cameras, each one built around four large-area linear Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) and able to image the sky within a field of view of ~1 sr with a source location accuracy of ~1 arcmin, while at the same time reaching a spectral resolution better than 350 eV FWHM at 6 keV. The LEM-X instrument preliminarly envisages about ten such camera pairs, arranged on a dome-like structure on the surface of the Moon, to reach a sensitivity better than 5 mCrab in 50 ks and 1 Crab in 1 s in the 2 -- 50 keV energy band.
In this contribution we describe the design of LEM-X, we discuss the scientific performance and we report the status of the instrument development.
Presenter
Francesco Ceraudo
INAF - Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (Italy)
Francesco Ceraudo is a researcher at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF). His main field of research is the characterization of state-of-the-art instrumentation for X-ray space astronomy, especially Silicon Drift Detectors and Micro-Pore Optics. He has worked on such projects as the Pixelated Silicon Drift Detector (PixDD), the Large Area Detector (LAD) of the eXTP mission, and the Wide Field Monitor of the eXTP, STROBE-X and LEM-X missions. He has a long experience in the development of software for instrumentation control, data analysis, radiation campaign, and simulation of instrument performances under various conditions and at different phases of the life of the mission.