NanoGam - a non-uniform voxel pattern for monitoring and localizing gamma-ray transients

Following the recent discoveries by the LIGO-VIRGO gravitational wave (GW) observatories, astronomers aim to observe the entire sky at once with increasing sensitivity. Continuous monitoring the soft gamma-ray skies is crucial in order to increase the sample of joint observations of gravitational and electromagnetic waves, for a deeper understanding of the underlying phenomena involved in the mergers of neutron stars and black holes and their associated GWs. The ability to localize those transients will accelerate their followup at longer wavebands.

In this talk we will present NanoGam – a proposed constellation of nanosatellites for monitoring the gamma-ray sky. The proposed detection unit is a three dimensional non-uniform pattern of gamma-ray-detecting-voxels based on small scintillators with SiPM light-sensors. Using small voxels maximizes the effective area projected at any point in the sky to an area equivalent to the area achieved in large detectors such as Fermi-GBM, but on a platform as small as a 3U-6U CubeSat. The non-uniform pattern utilizes the occultation between voxels to provide angular sensitivity, in order to reconstruct the transient positon.

We will show the recent advancements in designing the readout hardware to simultaneously read tens of voxels, and a preliminary voxel patterns which we simulated and tested in our lab.