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Hitomi Master Catalog

Metadata Updated: March 13, 2026

This table records high-level information for the observations obtained with Hitomi and provides access to the data archive. The Hitomi mission was launched on a JAXA H-IIA into low Earth orbit on February 17, 2016, at 5:45 pm JPS from Tanegashima Space Center. Hitomi was equipped with four different instruments that together cover a wide energy range 0.3-600 keV. The Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS), which combined a lightweight Soft X-ray Telescope paired with a X-ray Calorimeter Spectrometer, provided non-dispersive 7-eV resolution in the 0.3-10 keV bandpass with a field of view of about 3 arcminutes. The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) expanded the field of view with a new generation CCD camera in the energy range of 0.5-12 keV at the focus of the second lightweights Soft X-ray Telescope; the Hard X-ray Imager (HXI, two units) performed sensitive imaging spectroscopy in the 5-80 keV band; the non-imaging Soft Gamma-ray Detector (SGD, two units) extended Hitomi's energy band to 600 keV. On March 27, 2016, JAXA lost contact with the satellite and, on April 28, announced the cessation of the efforts to restore mission operations. At that time Hitomi was in check-out phase and had started the calibration observations. Data were collected from six celestial objects (Perseus, N132D, IGR_J16318-4848, RXJ1856.5-3754, G21.5-0.9, and Crab) as well as black sky for a total of about one month of data. The data from these observations were divided into intervals of one day if the observation of a specific pointing was longer that one day. A sequence number was assigned to each observing day and within data from all instruments are included. The day division was mainly to limit the data size within a sequence number. There are in total 42 sequences, and each record in this database table is dedicated to a single sequence. The early observations do not contain data from all instruments and in cases the object was not always placed at the aim point. This database contains parameters to indicate which instrument was on and if the celestial source was in the field of view. The SXS was the first instrument to turn on and therefore all observations contain SXS data, although the thermal equilibrium was reached after March 4 2016. The second instrument was the SXI followed by the HXIs and, finally, the two SGDs. This database table was generated at the Hitomi Science Data Center processing site (Angelini, L., Terada, Y, et al., 2016, SPIE 9905E, 14) with additions to indicate which instrument was on and if the source was in the FOV. It was ingested into the HEASARC database in June 2017. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date March 13, 2026
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/hitomaster
Data Last Modified 2026-03-09
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id a58f29ec-5a57-4a63-9aee-949666c84b43
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL ivo://nasa.heasarc/hitomaster
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash ed634b9db6e965c5414c9e0dbdcee5640a42bd2a6d9704a552ae5be679caa5a4
Source Schema Version 1.1

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