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Session 77 - AXAF Calibration.
Display session, Wednesday, January 17
North Banquet Hall, Convention Center
The Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), scheduled for launch in August 1998, will be the premier US X-ray astronomy mission for the late 1990's and beyond. The AXAF mission has been designed to provide sensitive, high angular (\sim1øver 2^\prime\prime) and spectral (E/\Delta E \sim 1000) resolution observations over the 0.1--10 keV X-ray band. In addition, the project has as one of its major goals the calibration of AXAF to the \sim1% level. In this paper we present detailed simulations of the anticipated \hboxX-ray performance of the AXAF High Resolution Mirror Assembly (HRMA) during ground calibration at the Marshall Space Flight Center, which will commence in November 1996. The HRMA consists of a set of eight superbly-figured, nested, cylinder-like optical elements in a Wolter Type-I geometry. Fabrication of the optics is now complete and the alignment of the elements into the HRMA is underway. In our analysis we incorporate optical metrology data from the mirror manufacturer, finite-element models for the gravitational deformation of the optics, estimates of the expected alignment errors, X-ray reflectivity data, and models of the calibration sources and detectors into a high fidelity raytrace model. We present detailed simulations of the numerous calibration tests which are being planned.
