Image degradation due to assembly and alignment errors in conical foil  x-ray telescopes

James E. Harvey; William J. Gressler

doi:10.1117/1.600954

1 October 1996 Image degradation due to assembly and alignment errors in conical foil x-ray telescopes

James E. Harvey, William J. Gressler

Author Affiliations +

Optical Engineering, Vol. 35, Issue 10, (October 1996). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.600954

The technology to fabricate and assemble many concentric, nested conical foil x-ray telescopes for high-throughput, moderateresolution, spectroscopic applications promises to be a cost-effective alternative to the grinding and polishing of conventional grazing incidence Wolter Type I telescopes. The three fundamental mechanisms that degrade achievable resolution for any imaging system are diffraction, geometrical aberrations (due to residual design errors, surface figure errors, and alignment errors), and scattering due to residual optical surface irregularities. A detailed parametric analysis of the image degradation due to each of these mechanisms is presented, with particular emphasis on the assembly and alignment errors for these tightly nested conical foil x-ray telescopes. A detailed error budget tree is then developed from which assembly and alignment tolerances can be derived. This error budget tree allows systems engineering trade-offs between foil surface tolerances, assembly and alignment tolerances, and the intrinsic resolution due to diffraction and residual design errors (the conical approximation to the ideal paraboloidal and hyperboloidal surface figure). Although the Danish Space Research Institute’s XSPECT conical foil x-ray telescope design parameters were used in this study, the methodology developed is applicable to any nested array of grazing incidence x-ray telescopes.

Citation Download Citation

James E. Harvey and William J. Gressler "Image degradation due to assembly and alignment errors in conical foil x-ray telescopes," Optical Engineering 35(10), (1 October 1996). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.600954

Published: 1 October 1996

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

;

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE