In-Orbit Vignetting Calibrations of XMM-Newton Telescopes

We describe measurements of the mirror vignetting in the XMM-Newton Observatory made in-orbit, using observations of SNR G21.5-09 and SNR 3C58 with the EPIC imaging cameras. The instrument features that complicate these measurements are briefly described. We show the spatial and energy dependences of measured vignetting, outlining assumptions made in deriving the eventual agreement between simulation and measurement. Alternate methods to confirm these are described, including an assessment of source elongation with off-axis angle, the surface brightness distribution of the diffuse X-ray background, and the consistency of Coma cluster emission at different position angles. A synthesis of these measurements leads to a change in the XMM calibration data base, for the optical axis of two of the three telescopes, by in excess of 1 arcmin. This has a small but measureable effect on the assumed spectral responses of the cameras for on-axis targets. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Design of 2-M to 6-M Liquid Mirror Containers

A new design is proposed for large (up to 6-m) liquid mirror containers. The design uses Kevlar, foam and aluminum, as in previous designs, but with a different configuration that makes the container lighter, stronger and more rigid. The results of finite element analysis are presented, consisting in the deformations due to temperature changes and to weight, and in the security factor for each material when maximum constraints are applied. Tilt rigidity is also analyzed. They show that the composite material construction technique gives a good performance up to 6 m diameters. The figures and tables contained in this paper can be used as recipes to build containers having diameters between 2 and 6 m. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

On the existence of transverse relativistic aberrations in moving mirror

Relativistic aberration and Doppler effects on rotating mirrors have been claimed (Ragazzoni & Claudi, 1995) and later refuted (Hickson, Bhatia & Iovino, 1995). While an experimental confirmation of the absence of the Doppler effect has been carried out in 1974, a measurement of the absence of the aberration effect is missing. It is shown that analyzing published data on the LAGEOS pulse-return signature an experimental confirmation of the absence of the effect is obtained.     

High‐resolution and super stacking of time‐reversal mirrors in locating seismic sources

Time reversal mirrors can be used to backpropagate and refocus incident wavefields to their actual source location, with the subsequent benefits of imaging with high‐resolution and super‐stacking properties. These benefits of time reversal mirrors have been previously verified with computer simulations and laboratory experiments but not with exploration‐scale seismic data. We now demonstrate the high‐resolution and the super‐stacking properties in locating seismic sources with field seismic data that include multiple scattering. Tests on both synthetic data and field data show that a time reversal mirror has the potential to exceed the Rayleigh resolution limit by factors of 4 or more. Results also show that a time reversal mirror has a significant resilience to strong Gaussian noise and that accurate imaging of source locations from passive seismic data can be accomplished with traces having signal‐to‐noise ratios as low as 0.001. Synthetic tests also demonstrate that time reversal mirrors can sometimes enhance the signal by a factor proportional to the square root of the product of the number of traces, denoted as N and the number of events in the traces. This enhancement property is denoted as super‐stacking and greatly exceeds the classical signal‐to‐noise enhancement factor of . High‐resolution and super‐stacking are properties also enjoyed by seismic interferometry and reverse‐time migration with the exact velocity model.     

A fast tracking mirror for adaptive optics

A piezo driven tilt mirror was developed and built as one component of an image motion compensation system for a solar telescope. The bandwidth of the mirror with a diameter of 60 mm is about 1 kHz with negligible phase shift between input signal and mirror response up to 900 Hz. The tilt range is 1.6 mrad. Special care was taken to maintain the surface quality of the mirror to better than /15 after fixing it to the substrate.     

The SIMBOL-X hard X-ray mission

SIMBOL-X is a hard X-ray mission based on a formation flight architecture, operating in the 0.5–80 keV energy range, which has been selected for a comprehensive Phase A study, being jointly carried out by CNES and ASI. SIMBOL-X makes uses of a long (in the 25–30 m range) focal length multilayer-coated X-ray mirrors to focus for the first time X-rays with energy above 10 keV, resulting in at least a two orders of magnitude improvement in angular resolution and sensitivity compared to non focusing techniques used so far. The SIMBOL-X revolutionary instrumental capabilities will allow us to elucidate outstanding questions in high energy astrophysics, related in particular to the physics and energetic of the accretion processes on-going in the Universe, also performing a census of black holes on all scales, achieved through deep, wide-field surveys of extragalactic fields and of the Galactic center, and the to the acceleration of electrons and hadrons particles to the highest energies. In this paper, the mission science objectives, design, instrumentation and status are reviewed. PACS: 95.55 – Astronomical and space-research instrumentation 95.85 – Astronomical Observations 98.85.Nv – X-ray     

Ein Vorschlag zur Erzielung hochreflektierender Teleskop-Optik

Since 60 years the common method generally used to coat astronomical mirrors is vacuum deposition of pure aluminium by evaporation. Such mirror surfaces degrade very fast resulting in a considerably reduced optical throughput. Protecting layers (oxides like SiO₂, fluorides like CaF₂) are not applied because their removal, necessary before realuminization, involves damage to the optical surface of the mirror substrate which would necessitate a costly refiguring of that surface. The reduction of the throughput exceeds typically 30 % for a Cassegrain system; it precludes the introduction of excellent optical design solutions in astronomy based on Schwarzschild's theory using four-reflection optics. In addition, the cost of the conventional procedure of aluminizing and its risks increase tremendously with the size of the mirrors of the very large telescopes now planned or under construction. Here I propose a three-layer composion in two forms (Fig. 1): a) stopping layer -- reflecting layer - protecting layer, or b) carrier layer - protecting layer. The stopping layer is supposed to be completely insensitive to the chemical agents dissolving or detaching the protecting (and the reflecting) layers. On the other hand, in modification b), the carrier layer is supposed to be chemically removable from the substrate, thereby detaching also the protecting (and reflecting) layer. As an example for a layer system of type a) experiments are under way with the system gold/silver/quartz on various mirror substrate materials. Quartz can be easily dissolved by fluorid acid without any damage to the gold stopping layer. Dense. pore free Al₂O₃+SiO₂ layers without defects can be expected to protect the silver reflectance R⩾ 0.98 under real observatory conditions effectively for more than 10-20 years. In addition this protecting layer permits frequent and effective cleaning of the mirror from dust etc. The reflectance of silver exceeds that of fresh conventionally aluminized mirrors with R ≅ 0.87 for all wavelengths λ ⩾ 3370 Å. In the blue the silver mirror realizes with R = 0.995 ideal conditions for Schwarzschild optics. In the V-IR region it is with ≅ 0.99 by the factor 1.2 better than present-day mirrors.