List of Figures

• 3.1. The 96 minute Suzaku orbit.
• 3.2. [Left] Schematic picture of the bottom of the Suzaku satellite. [Right] A side view of the instrument and telescopes on Suzaku.
• 3.3. XIS effective area of one XRT + XIS system, for both the FI and BI chips.(No contamination included.)
• 3.4. The Encircled Energy Function (EEF) showing the fractional energy within a given radius for one quadrant of the XRT-I telescopes on Suzaku at 4.5 and 8.0keV.
• 3.5. Total effective area of the HXD detectors, PIN and GSO, as a function of energy.
• 5.1. Simulation of an HXD observation of a 10mCrab source with a Crab-like spectrum. Here, the cornorm of the two background files has been set to 0.
• 5.2. Simulation with the highest estimated background, for both the PIN and the GSO.
• 5.3. Simulation with the lowest estimated background, for both the PIN and the GSO.
• 6.1. Layout of the XRTs on the Suzaku spacecraft.
• 6.2. A Suzaku X-ray telescope.
• 6.3. A thermal shield.
• 6.4. Focal positions on the XISs when the satellite points at MCG$-$6-30-15 using the XIS aim point.
• 6.5. Locations of the optical axis of each XRT-I module in the focal plane determined from the observations of the Crab nebula in 2005 August-September. This figure implies that the image on each XIS detector becomes brightest when a target star is placed at the position of the corresponding cross. The dotted circles are drawn every $30''$ in radius from the XIS-default position (see text).
• . The source- and background-integration regions overlaid on the Crab images taken with XIS1 at the XIS-default position (left) and the HXD-default position (right) on 2005 September 15-16. The images are elongated in the frame-transfer direction due to the out-of-time events (see text). In order to cancel these events, the background regions with a size of 126 by 1024 pixels each are taken at the left and right ends of the chip for the XIS-default position, and a single region with a size of 252 by 1024 pixels is taken at the side far from the Crab image for the HXD-default position. The remaining source-integration region has a size of 768 by 1024 pixels, or $13.\!'3\times17.\!'8$. The background subtraction is carried out after area-size correction.
• 6.7. Power-law fit to the Crab spectra of all four XIS modules taken at the XIS-default position. All the parameters are allowed to vary independently for each XIS module. The fit is carried out in the 1.0-10.0keV band, excluding the 1.5-2.0keV interval where large systematic uncertainties associated with the Si K-edge remain. This energy range is retrieved after the fit.
• 6.8. Count rates of the Crab pointings offset in DETX (left) and DETY (right) in the 2-10keV band. Red and green symbols correspond to the data during 2005 and 2006, respectively. The solid line corresponds to the output of the ray-tracing simulator xissim. The bottom panels show the ratios of the data to the simulator output.
• 6.9. The same as Fig.6.8 but in the 3-6keV band.
• 6.10. The same as Fig.6.8 but in the 8-10keV band.
• 6.11. Images of the four XRT-I modules in the focal plane: SS Cyg (left) and simulation (right). All the images are binned to 2$\times$2 pixels and then smoothed with a Gaussian with a sigma of 3 pixels, where the pixel size is 24$\mu$m. The Fe55 events were removed from the SS Cyg image.
• 6.12. PSF of the four XRT-I images. The lower panels show the ratio between the observed and simulated data.
• . EEF of the four XRT-I images. The EEF is normalized to unity at the edge of the CCD chip (a square of $17'\!.8$ on the side). The lower panels show the ratio between the observed and simulated data.
• 6.14. Focal plane images formed by stray light. The left and middle panels show simulated images of a monochromatic point-like source of 4.51keV located at $(-20', 0')$ in (DETX, DETY) without and with the pre-collimator, respectively. The radial dark lanes are the shadows of the alignment bars. The right panel is the in-flight stray image of the Crab nebula in the 2.5-5.5keV energy band located at the same off-axis angle. The unit of the color scale of this panel is counts per 16 pixels over the entire exposure time of 8428.8s. The count rate from the whole image is 0.78$\pm$0.01counts s$^{-1}$ including background. Note that the intensity of the Crab nebula measured with XIS3 at the XIS-default position is 458$\pm$3counts s$^{-1}$ in the same 2.5-5.5keV band. All images are binned to 2$\times$2 pixels and then smoothed with a Gaussian with a sigma of 2 pixels, where the pixel size is 24$\mu$m.
• 6.15. Mosaic images of offset observations of the Crab taken in 2005.
• 6.16. Same as figure 6.15, but taken in 2010.
• 6.17. Angular responses of the XRT-I at 1.5 (left) and 4.5keV (right) up to 2$^\circ$. The effective area is normalized to 1 at the on-axis position. The integration area is corresponding to the detector size of the XISs ( $17.\!'8\times17.\!'8$). The four solid lines in the plots correspond to different detector IDs. The crosses are the normalized effective area using the Crab pointings.
• 6.18. Stray patterns for a stray source at an azimuth angle of $\alpha$ and an offset angle of $R$.
• 6.19. Pointing positions targeting the three kinds of stray light free regions: the ``Quadrant Boundary'' region (top), the ``Secondary-reflection component free'' region (middle) and the ``Backside component free'' region (bottom).
• 7.1. Photo of an XIS sensor
• 7.2. XIS field of view
• 7.3. Schematic view of the data flow in one XIS unit.
• 7.4. Time sequence of the exposure, transfer, and readout
• 7.5. Data pattern for 5$\times$5, 3$\times$3, and 2$\times$2 editing modes
• 7.6. Incident versus observed count rates for a point-like source
• 7.7. Image of out-of-time events
• 7.8. Frame data with SCI
• 7.9. Trend of $^{55}$Fe peak height and width
• 7.10. Gain in the hard band for the Normal mode (without options)
• 7.11. Energy resolution in the hard band for the Normal mode (without options)
• 7.12. Gain in the soft band for the Normal mode (without options)
• 7.13. Energy resolution in the soft band for the Normal mode (without options)
• 7.14. Gain for the window option (XIS0)
• 7.15. Gain for the window option (XIS1)
• 7.16. Gain for the window option (XIS3)
• 7.17. Gain and resolution for the burst option
• 7.18. History of the P-sum energy resolution.
• 7.19. Gain for the 2$\times$2 editing mode.
• 7.20. Chemical composition of the contaminant
• 7.21. Time dependence of the thickness of the C contaminant
• 7.22. Time dependence of the thickness of the N contaminant
• 7.23. Time dependence of the thickness of the O contaminant
• 7.24. Time dependence of the thickness of the total contaminant
• 7.25. Spatial dependence of the thickness of the contaminant
• 7.26. XIS non X-ray background (NXB) spectra
• 7.27. Cut-off rigidity dependence of the NXB.
• 7.28. ACTY dependence of the NXB
• 7.29. Soft NXB increase in XIS1
• 7.30. Relative normalization between different XIS sensors.
• 7.31. Definition of grades in the P-Sum/Timing mode.
• 8.1. The Hard X-ray Detector before installation.
• 8.2. Schematic picture of the HXD instrument, which consists of two types of detectors: the PIN diodes located in the front of the GSO scintillator, and the scintillator itself.
• 8.3. Angular response of a single fine-collimator along the satellite X-axis, obtained from offset observations of the Crab nebula.
• 8.4. [Left] Comparison of average non X-ray background spectra of the PIN, obtained in various epochs. The Crab spectrum, scaled down by two orders of magnitude, is shown as well. [Right] Evolution of average GSO-NXB spectra.
• 8.5. Comparison of the in-orbit detector background of the PIN/GSO, normalized by the individual effective areas, with that of the RXTE-PCA, RXTE-HEXTE, and BeppoSAX-PDS. Dotted lines indicate 1Crab, 100mCrab, and 10mCrab intensities.
• 8.6. [Left] Light curve of the non X-ray background of the PIN, folded with the elapsed time after the SAA passage (top), and the average cut-off rigidity at the corresponding position (bottom). [Right] The same folded light curves for the GSO background, in the 40-90, 260-440, and 440-700keV energy bands.
• 8.7. Comparison between the data and the NXB model count rate of sky observations with 10ks integration time in the 15-40keV band. Observations with no apparent hard X-ray objects in the XIS FOV were selected (see text for details of the data selection).
• 8.8. The same as Figure 8.7, but for observations of E0102-72 (black) and the Cygnus LOOP (red).
• 8.9. Comparison between the measured PIN spectra (black) and the PIN NXB model spectra (red) for observations of objects with no strong hard X-ray contribution. Their fractional residuals are given by purple crosses in the bottom panel of each figure. The blue and green histograms in the top panel indicate the background-subtracted spectrum and the typical CXB spectrum (Boldt 1987), respectively.
• 8.10. Comparison of the GSO spectra between the data (black) and BGD model (red) for observations of objects with no known strong hard X-rays. Their fractional residuals are given by blue crosses.
• 8.11. Calculated detection limits of the HXD, for continuum measurements. The solid lines denote the statistical 3$\sigma$ limit for a 100ks exposure, while the dashed lines show the assumed systematic uncertainties of 3% and 1.5% for the PIN- and GSO-NXB modeling, respectively.