ESA Science & Technology - The Soft X-ray Imager on Hitomi

This photo shows the Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) on the Hitomi satellite.

The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) is a wide-field imaging system, receiving light from one of the two Soft X-ray Telescopes, SXT-1. The detector, an X-ray sensitive silicon CCD camera, records photons with energy between 0.4 keV and 12 keV and can operate at temperatures around 153 K.

Hitomi (known as ASTRO-H prior to launch) is a high-energy astrophysics space observatory, developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in collaboration with institutions in Japan, the US, Canada, and Europe.