The Reflection Grating Spectrometer on board XMM-Newton

¹ Space Research Organization of The Netherlands, Sorbonnelaan 2, 3584 CA Utrecht, The Netherlands
² Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA
³ Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking, Surrey, RH5 6NT, UK
⁴ Paul Scherrer Institute, 5232 Villigen, Switzerland
⁵ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, PO Box 808 Livermore, CA 94550, USA
⁶ Astrophysics Division, Space Science Department of ESA, ESTeC, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands

J. W. den Herder

Received: 2 October 2000
Accepted: 26 October 2000

Abstract

The ESA X-ray Multi Mirror mission, XMM-Newton, carries two identical Reflection Grating Spectrometers (RGS) behind two of its three nested sets of Wolter I type mirrors. The instrument allows high-resolution ( to 500) measurements in the soft X-ray range (6 to 38 Åor 2.1 to 0.3 keV) with a maximum effective area of about 140 cm² at 15 Å. Its design is optimized for the detection of the K-shell transitions of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, and silicon, as well as the L shell transitions of iron. The present paper gives a full description of the design of the RGS and its operational modes. We also review details of the calibrations and in-orbit performance including the line spread function, the wavelength calibration, the effective area, and the instrumental background.