X-RAY ALL-SKY MONITORING AND TRANSIENT DETECTION USING A CODED SPHERETELESCOPE

We present a design for a hard X-ray all-sky monitor which consists of a spherical structure whose surface is partially covered by circular units which serve the dual purpose of detector and mask elements, form ing a coded aperture telescope with full 4 pi steradian coverage. We d emonstrate that a simple practical implementation of this geometry res ults in an instrument which is capable of measuring the fluxes in the 10-20 keV bandpass of the hundred brightest sources in the sky at leas t every two days. We also show how this instrument can be used to imag e burst and transient sources; obtain their positions with arcminute a ccuracy; and follow their light curves throughout their lifetimes.