Overview of the nuclear Compton telescope

The nuclear compton telescope (NCT) is a balloon-borne soft gamma-ray (0.2-15 MeV) telescope designed to study astrophysical sources of nuclear line emission and gamma-ray polarization. NCT utilizes an array of 12 3-D imaging germanium detectors (GeDs). A 2-GeD prototype of NCT is scheduled to be flown in Spring 2004. The NCT program is designed to develop and test the technologies and analysis techniques crucial for the Advanced Compton Telescope, while studying gamma-ray radiation with very high spectral resolution, moderate angular resolution, and high sensitivity. NCT has a novel, ultra-compact design optimized for studying nuclear line emission in the critical 0.5-2 MeV range, and polarization in the 0.2-0.5 MeV range. The prototype flight will critically test the novel instrument technologies, analysis techniques, and background rejection procedures we have developed for high resolution Compton telescopes. In this paper we present an overview of the NCT prototype instrument. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.