Vacuum ultraviolet performance of a Wolter Type II telescope: theoretical and experimental results

Abstract

Researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center have been developing fabrication and testing techniques for glancing incidence mirrors for many years.1,2 We have also been developing analytical tools to predict performance of such mirrors from their measured surface data.3 The ability to predict imaging from surface metrology would allow us to set error budgets on the surface quality of glancing incidence mirrors to obtain any imaging requirement requested. Efforts have been ongoing to verify our imaging calculations by comparison with actual imaging tests. We have succeeded in verifying our calculations by comparing predictions of the imaging of the SERTS-C4 Wolter type II telescope with actual imaging tests at 1236 Å.