The heart of Chandra is the high-resolution mirror assembly. Conventional mirrors absorb X-rays. The Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) mirrors are constructed at an angle and consist of 2 sets of 4 nestled hyperbolic shapes which cause the X-rays to skip along the mirrors like a flat stone skipping across the surface of a lake until they are brought to a focus at the high resolution camera (HRC.) If your eyes had the same resolving power as the Chandra mirrors, you could read the headline of a newspaper that was one half of a mile away.

First    Previous    Next    Last       Index    Home

Slide 9 of 28