X-ray Telescopes and Mirrors
X-ray telescopes (XRTs) have varying directionality or imaging ability based on glancing angle reflection rather than refraction or large deviation reflection. This limits them to much narrower fields of view than visible or UV telescopes. The mirrors can be made of ceramic or metal foil.
The first X-ray telescope in astronomy is used to observe the Sun. The first X-ray picture of the Sun is taken in 1963, by a rocket-borne telescope.
The utilization of X-ray mirrors for extrasolar X-ray astronomy simultaneously requires:
- the ability to determine the location at the arrival of an X-ray photon in two dimensions and
- a reasonable detection efficiency.
Read more about this topic: X-ray Astronomy
Famous quotes containing the word mirrors:
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)