The scientific purpose for the MeV Auroral X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy (MAXIS) flight is to study electron precipitation from the magnetosphere into the ionosphere. This electron precipitation creates the aurora (northern and southern lights) along with X-rays which can be observed with our balloon instrumentation. For this project, the University of Washington provided a bismuth germanate (BGO) X-ray spectrometer and two X-ray imaging cameras. One camera has a pinhole collimator and the other has a coded aperture mask collimator. Both cameras use scintillating crystals and photomultiplier tubes to detect X-rays which are produced in the aurora. The Berkeley balloon group provided a high resolution germanium X-ray spectrometer. All of these instruments flew on the INTERBOA campaign in 1996, where they observed an unusual relativistic electron precipitation event.
