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Session 34 - High Resolution X-ray Imaging & Spectroscopy with AXAF.
Oral session, Tuesday, June 10
North Main Hall F/G,
The AXAF Science Center (ASC) and Mission Support Team (MST) have been developing a computer model of the AXAF telescope over the past several years. This is a high fidelity model and includes modules for the mirrors, gratings, and all four focal plane detectors. The high resolution mirror assembly (HRMA) is modeled using a ray trace program under development by the MST. At present, the AXAF simulator is being fine tuned to produce consistency with all the ground based calibration data obtained over the past six months. There are several facility effects present during ground based testing which degrade the response of the mirrors relative to their in-flight performance (e.g., gravity, fine source distance, and finite source extent). These facility effects must be removed from the models before generating the in-flight performance predictions. During our talk, we will present simulations of in-flight observations with various combinations of gratings and detectors along with predictions for the effective areas, point spread functions, and encircled energies for all focal plane detectors.
