The Current Status Of Grazing Incidence Optics

Grazing incidence optics have been in use for quite some time for x-ray applications, including fusion research, synchrotron beam lines and x-ray astronomy. X-ray astronomy in particular has benefitted significantly from the development and performance improvements of large x-ray telescopes. Both high angular resolution and large collecting area are aimed at in the design and manufacturing. The x-ray telescope for the German ROSAT x-ray astronomy satellite mission has been finished and assembled with an unprecedented resolution of 3.3 arcsec for the half energy width of the point spread function and less than 3% scattering. A set of 3 light weight telescopes with an effective collecting area of 700 cm2 at 8 keV per telescope is being developed for the XMM mission of the European Space Agency using a nest of 58 thin wall Wolter type I systems. A review of the design, manufacturing and x-ray optical performance of both the ROSAT and XMM telescopes is presented.