Author:
Miyamoto Hiroko,Battisti Matteo,Barghini Dario,Belov Alexander,Bertaina Mario,Bianciotto Marta,Bisconti Francesca,Blaksley Carl,Blin Sylvie,Bolmgren Karl,Cambiè Giorgio,Capel Francesca,Casolino Marco,Churilo Igor,Crisconio Marino,De La Taille Christophe,Ebisuzaki Toshikazu,Eser Johannes,Fenu Francesco,Filippatos George,Franceschi Massimo Alberto,Fuglesang Christer,Golzio Alessio,Gorodetzky Philippe,Kajino Fumiyoshi,Kasuga Hiroshi,Klimov Pavel,Kungel Viktoria,Kuznetsov Vladimir,Manfrin Massimiliano,Marcelli Laura,Mascetti Gabriele,Marszał Włodzimierz,Mignone Marco,Murashov Alexey,Napolitano Tommaso,Ohmori Hitoshi,Olinto Angela,Parizot Etienne,Picozza Piergiorgio,Piotrowski Lech Wiktor,Plebaniak Zbigniew,Prévôt Guillaume,Reali Enzo,Ricci Marco,Romoli Giulia,Sakaki Naoto,Sharakin Sergei,Shinozaki Kenji,Szabelski Jacek,Takizawa Yoshiyuki,Valentini Giovanni,Vrabel Michal,Wincke Lawrence,Zotov Mikhail
Abstract
Mini-EUSO is a wide Field-of-View (FoV, 44°) telescope currently in operation from a nadir-facing UV-transparent window in the Russian Zvezda module on the International Space Station (ISS). It is the first detector of the JEM-EUSO program deployed on the ISS, launched in August 2019. The main goal of Mini-EUSO is to measure the UV emissions from the ground and atmosphere, using an orbital platform. Mini-EUSO is mainly sensitive in the 290–430 nm bandwidth. Light is focused by a system of two Fresnel lenses of 25 cm diameter each on the Photo-Detector-Module (PDM), which consists of an array of 36 Multi-Anode Photomultiplier Tubes (MAPMTs), arranged in blocks of 2 × 2 called Elementary Cells (ECs), for a total of 2304 pixels working in photon counting mode, in three different time resolutions of 2.5 µs (defined as 1 Gate Time Unit, GTU), 320 µs and 40.96 ms operating in parallel. In the longest time scale, the data is continuously acquired to monitor the UV emission of the Earth. It is best suited for the observation of ground sources and therefore has been used for the observational campaigns of the ground-based UV flasher in order to perform an end-to-end calibration of Mini-EUSO. In this contribution, the assembled UV flasher, the operation of the field campaign and the analysis of the obtained data are presented. The result is compared with the overall effi ciency computed from the expectations which takes into account the atmospheric attenuation and the parametrisation of different effects such as the optics effi ciency, the MAPMT detection effi ciency, BG3 filter transmittance and the transparency of the ISS window.