Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
Deutsche Version MPE HEG X-Ray Astronomy Wave ROSAT Gallery Five Years of Rosat
Transmission Gratings for AXAF
AXAF (the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility), a large NASA X-ray observatory, is to be launched in the summer of 1998. It posses a 1.2 m telescope with a focal length of 10 m, which allows an angular resolution of 0.5 arcseconds. Its high energy resolution will be reached by transmission gratings, one of which will be developed in a collaboration of SRON at Utrecht and the MPE. The picture shows some of the 900 AXAF wire facets. The gold mesh is glued on thin rings of steel (15 mm) and the grating is stabilized by a coarse triangular structured support mesh. The diffraction by the grating of even visible light is nicely demonstrated by its spectral decomposition.
gzipped PostScript image
© X-Ray Group at MPE (group)
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