Imager onboard INTEGRAL

To follow up on the remarkable discoveries of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and GRANAT, the International Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) mission was selected by ESA as part of the agency's 'HORIZON 2000' strategic plan. It is scheduled to begin detailed gamma ray spectral and imaging studies, of unprecedented resolution, in the year 2001. One of the two main INTEGRAL instruments is a high performance imager. It features a coded aperture mask and a novel large area multilayer detector which utilizes both cadmium telluride and cesium iodide elements to deliver the fine angular-resolution approximately 12 arcmin, wide spectral response (15 keV to 10 MeV) and high resolution spectroscopy (6% at 100 keV) required to satisfy the mission's imaging objectives.