Diamond-turned lacquer-coated soft x-ray telescope mirrors.

ABSTRACT

X-ray astronomy has reached sufficient maturity to demand at least moderate angular resolution lightgathering telescopes to accompany detector development. Keeping the cost of such telescopes within the budget of low-cost flight opportunities such as sounding rockets and SPARTAN missions is a substantial challenge. We have developed a program of precision diamond mirror turning, mechanical polishing, lacquer coating, and metal deposition which produces x-ray telescopes with minute of arc angular resolution at moderate cost. We describe the process and report calibration results for a 80 cm (31.4 in.) diam Wolter I telescope flown aboard an Aries sounding rocket.