Subarcsecond x-ray telescope for imaging the solar corona in the 0.25- to 1.2-keV band

We have developed an x-ray telescope that uses a new technique for focusing x-rays with grazing incidence optics. The telescope was built with spherical optics for all of its components, utilizing the high quality surfaces obtainable when polishing spherical (as opposed to aspherical) optics. We tested the prototype x-ray telescope in the 300 meter vacuum pipe at White Sands Missile Range, NM. The telescope features 2 degree graze angles with tungsten coatings, yielding a bandpass of 0.25-1.5 keV with a peak effective area of 0.8 cm ² at 0.83 keV. Results from x-ray testing at energies of 0.25 keV and 0.93 keV (C-K and Cu-L) verify 0.5 arcsecond performance at 0.93 keV. Results from modeling the x-ray telescope's response to the SUn show that the current design would be capable of recording 10 half arcsecond images of a solar active region during a 300 second NASA sounding rocket flight.