0000000000312036
AUTHOR
B. Salmaso
Active shape correction of a thin glass/plastic x-ray mirror
Optics for future X-ray telescopes will be characterized by very large aperture and focal length, and will be made of lightweight materials like glass or plastic in order to keep the total mass within acceptable limits. Optics based on thin slumped glass foils are currently in use in the NuSTAR telescope and are being developed at various institutes like INAF/OAB, aiming at improving the angular resolution to a few arcsec HEW. Another possibility would be the use of thin plastic foils, being developed at SAO and the Palermo University. Even if relevant progresses in the achieved angular resolution were recently made, a viable possibility to further improve the mirror figure would be the app…
Manufacturing and testing a thin glass mirror shell with piezoelectric active control
Optics for future X-ray telescopes will be characterized by very large aperture and focal length, and will be made of lightweight materials like glass or silicon in order to keep the total mass within acceptable limits. Optical modules based on thin slumped glass foils are being developed at various institutes, aiming at improving the angular resolution to a few arcsec HEW. Thin mirrors are prone to deform, so they require a careful integration to avoid deformations and even correct forming errors. On the other hand, this offers the opportunity to actively correct the residual deformation: a viable possibility to improve the mirror figure is the application of piezoelectric actuators onto t…
A multichannel piezo driver for active mirrors in X-ray telescopes
X-ray astronomy is gaining importance for studying X-ray space sources such as single and binary stars, neutron stars, supernovae and black holes. Due to atmospheric absorption, X-ray telescopes must operate in space on satellites. Among the causes limiting the resolution of modern telescopes are distortions in mirrors shape. An innovative approach for X-ray mirrors aims at correcting the shape errors by means of piezo-ceramic actuators glued to the back of the mirrors, thus creating an “active mirror”. In order to test the viability of shape correction, we fabricated [1] a prototype of a thin glass active mirror, sized 20 cm x 20 cm with a 400 um thickness (Fig. 1). The mirror can allocate…