Presentation details
» Lessons from Chandra: Comparing the Wolter I and Wolter-Schwarzschild prescriptions to optimize sensitivity
Presentation duration: 15 minutes
Presenter: Dan Schwartz
The ability to find faint objects in surveys depends on the telescope off-axis resolution, as well as its area and on-axis image quality. Chandra utilized a Wolter I prescription, on the rationale that the Wolter-Schwarzschild design was indistinguishable within the tolerances required for the 0.5 arcsec angular resolution of Chandra. We show that for a future mission such as Gen-X, with 0.1 arcsec resolution, that the Wolter-Schwarzschild design offers a distinct theoretical advantage in terms of numbers of resolution elements, lower background for point source detection, and therefore increased sensitivity to faint sources. This is important to detect the faintest possible sources serendipitously, as matched to the Gen-X objective of discovering the first Black Holes in the Universe.
Coauthors:- R. J. Brissenden
- M. Elvis
- G. Fabbiano
- T. Gaetz
- D. Jerius
- M. Juda
- P. B. Reid
- S. J. Wolk
- S. L. O'Dell
- W. W. Zhang
- and the Gen-X Team