Hard x-ray microchannel plate imaging telescope

The proposed Hard X-ray Imager (HXI) telescope consists of a single 10 X 10 cm microchannel plate (MCP) detector combined with a URA coded aperture. The telescope is nominally configured for a 2.3 degree field of view and an angular resolution of 10 arcsec. Thus providing an order of magnitude or greater spatial resolution improvement over existing hard X-ray telescope. Depending on the final telescope design, the resolution may approach the 1 arcsec domain. The HXI detector has a spatial resolution of 50 micrometers ((sigma) ) and a single photon timing resolution of 1 microsecond(s) ec. The currently operating prototype detector has sensitivity from 10 to 120 keV with a quantum efficiency (QE) varying from 20% at 20 keV to of 8% at 100 keV.