Study of X-ray spectral and timing properties of astronomical sources using low-cost stratospheric balloons
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Astronomical objects, such as the Sun, accreting matter around black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs, etc. are known to emit X-rays and gamma-rays. Some of these sources, such as highly magnetized neutron stars, show periodic pulsations. Even accreting matter around black holes and neutron stars shows timing properties including quasi-periodic oscillations. In this paper, we use the data of low-cost, lightweight, high-altitude (∼42 km) small, stratospheric balloon-borne missions of the Indian Centre for Space Physics. We measure the intensity of the secondary cosmic rays, the radiation fluxes, and the spectra of persistent X-ray sources or transient events such as solar flares and gamma-ray bursts, apart from routine weather parameters. In this study, we present the source detection method without an onboard pointing system and the temporal and spectral behaviour of the quiet Sun. We also analyse the data containing Crab in the field of view to find the pulsation of the Crab pulsar. During the analysis of the source detection and spectrum of the solar X-rays, we calculate the detector’s background radiation (mainly secondary cosmic rays) using physical assumptions and also take care of the atmospheric absorption effects. Finally, we show the source detection processes for the strong sources such as the Sun, Crab, and Cyg X-1, obtaining the quiet Sun’s spectrum. Among the interesting timing properties, we present the result for the Crab pulsar and find the well-known ∼33 Hz pulsations whenever our instrument pointed to the Crab.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".