Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
Deutsche Version MPE HEG X-Ray Astronomy Wave ROSAT Gallery ROSAT Calendar Images 1997
Transmission Gratings for AXAF
In 1998, NASA's X-ray astronomy observatorium AXAF (Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility) will be launched. AXAF has a 1.2 m telescope which should reach an angular resolution of 0.5 arcsec. To obtain high spectral resolution transmission gratings are used which are developed and built in cooperation with SRON (Utrecht) and MPE. MPE was responsible for the design, test, adjustment, and assembly of the grating elements produced by the company Heidenhain at Traunreut. 540 single grating facets are mounted on a ring-shaped frame with very high precision. During the mission the whole grating ring can be switched into the beam path of the telescope to perform spectroscopy. The diffractive effect of the grating can clearly be seen in the optical light by its decomposition in spectral colours.
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ROSAT (Röntgensatellit) 1997
Images from the X-ray sky with the ROSAT telescope · All rights reserved:
© Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Postfach 1603, 85740 Garching, Germany.
The X-ray images are produced by the SASS/EXSAS software MPE, ESO-MIDAS.
The ROSAT project is managed by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany on behalf of the Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung und Technologie (BMBF).
© X-Ray Group at MPE (group)
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