High energy spectroscopy with the AXAF

Abstract

The AXAF is a meter-class telescope that is planned to be the third of NASA's Great Observatories, joining the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory in orbit before the end of this decade. The telescope will approach tenth-arc-second resolution over a dynamic range of 100 (0.1-10 keV). An assortment of gratings and focal plane detectors will be utilized to provide unprecedented imaging and spectroscopic capabilities in a long-lived facility. In particular, the AXAF is unique in its high resolution imaging, and in the hard X-ray spectroscopy that can be performed with both high resolution and high throughput.