<title>High-resolution camera (HRC) on the Advanced X-Ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF)</title>

Abstract

The Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) is a major NASA space observatory and is scheduled for launch in 1998. AXAF will perform high spatial and spectral resolution observations of celestial sources in the soft x-ray band 0.1 - 10 keV. The high resolution camera (HRC) is one of two focal plane instruments being developed for the AXAF. The HRC will be capable of observing point and extended sources with high sensitivity and high spatial resolution and will be used to record the high resolution spectra produced by an objective transmission grating. The HRC is based on microchannel plates (MCPs). We describe the design and development of the HRC, its expected performance, and some of its observational goals. The HRC consists of two separate detectors, HRC-I (imaging) and HRC-S (spectroscopy). HRC-I is used for imaging and has a field of view of 31 arc min by 31 arc min and a spatial resolution of less than 25 micrometers (equivalent to less than 0.5 arc sec). HRC- S is optimized to readout the spectrum of AXAF's low energy transmission grating (LETG) and this combination will achieve resolving powers in excess of 1000 at low energies and cover a wavelength range of 4 to 140 angstroms.