X-ray imaging tests of Constellation-X SXT mirror segment pairs

The Constellation-X Spectroscopy X-ray Telescope (SXT) is a segmented, tightly nested Wolter-I telescope with a requirement of approximately 12.5 arcseconds HPD for the mirror system. The individual mirror segments are 0.4 mm thick, formed glass, making the task of mounting, alignment and bonding extremely challenging. Over the past year we have developed a series of tools to meet these challenges, the latest of which is an upgrade to the 600-meter x-ray beam line at GSFC. The new facilities allow us to perform full aperture and sub-aperture imaging tests of mirror segment pairs to locate the source of deformations and correlate them with our optical metrology. We present the optical metrology of the axial figure and Hartmann focus, x-ray imaging performance predictions based on analysis of the optical metrology, and both full aperture and sub-aperture x-ray imaging performance of test mirror segment pairs at 8.05 keV.

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[2]  W. W. Zhang,et al.  Some considerations for precision metrology of thin x-ray mirrors , 2008, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.