Light path through XMM-Newton's telescopes
Date: 29 September 2009
Copyright: ESA
Artist's impression of the XMM-Newton spacecraft. The animation shows how the light is collected by XMM-Newton's three telescopes through their entrance baffles. Within each telescope, the X-ray photons then pass a set of barrel-shaped coaxial mirrors (only a few of the actual 58 concentric mirrors are depicted; see also the item "X-ray Mirrors" linked from the right-hand menu).
After grazing the gold-plated mirrors, the now focused X-ray photons are collected at the other end of the 10-metre-long spacecraft where the detectors of the EPIC and RGS instruments are located.
The animation ends with a close-up of a telescope entrance baffle.
Last Update: 1 September 2019