WFC First Light

The picture shows the first image taken by the detector of the Wide Field Camera 1 onboard the SAX satellite which was launched on April 30 1996. The observation took place on June 5 from 14.29 till 16.09 during the commissioning phase of the instrument. At that time the satellite was in Default Pointing Mode. The WFC was observing a region in the sky where only diffuse X-ray background could be seen. During part of the observation the sky was obscured by the earth.
The picture shows clearly the shadow of the detector window support structure as cast by X-ray photons. Also the inflight calibration sources can be seen as bright spots.
From the instrument data it can be inferred that the WFC is in nominal condition, the gain, energy resolution and the spatial response are as expected.