The Bragg Crystal Spectrometer (BCS) is designed to study plasma heating and dynamics during the impulsive phase of solar flares. It consists of two bent crystal spectrometers, BCS-A and BCS-B, that observe the H-like line complex of Fe XXVI, and He-like complexes of Fe XXV, Ca XIX and S XV. Each spectrometer consists of a double detector placed behind a pair of germanium crystals that diffract the incoming X-rays into the detectors. The two structures are mounted at the front of the Yohkoh spacecraft, on either side of the central panel, with a thermal filter mounted in front of each spectrometer. The crystal dispersion axes are oriented north-south.
There is much more about the performance of the BCS instrument than is reported here. If additional information on the design and performance of the BCS is needed, the user is encouraged to consult the documents listed in Section 1.8.