Pointing Accuracy

The study of Swift pointing accuracy was updated in August 2013, and include all the observations carried out from October 1st, 2007 until August 22nd, 2013. The pointing accuracy was calculated by comparing the target positions in the Pre-Planned Science Timeline (PPST) to the target positions in the As-Flown Science Timeline (AFST), which describes the observations that actually were performed.

Figure 3b reports the offset distribution between the pre-planned and the as-flown target positions. The median pointing accuracy is 1.2 arcmin, with a tail of the distribution extending to a few arcmin ($<$5.3 arcmin with 99% probability).

Figure 4: Histogram of the separation between the PPST and the AFST positions.