A two-reflection optical design for nested X-ray telescopes is described in which the two grazing incidence angles are equal for each ray collected by each mirror, so that the total reflectivity is maximized. A specific design is discussed and its optical performances are compared to a reference type I Wolter optics. In the selected design scenario, a 16% reduction in the number of mirror shells and a 6% increase of the effective area between 1 keV and 10 keV is achieved, along with a small 2.6% decrease of the angular resolution over 12 armin field of view.

Date Published: 20 September 2007
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 6688, Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy III, 66880B (20 September 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.736413

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6688:
Optics for EUV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Astronomy III
Stephen L. O'Dell; Giovanni Pareschi, Editor(s)