We describe here some apsects of the current investigation into the Lobster Eye Telescope. This is part of an Australia/US/UK collaboration. A set of printed material describing some of aspects of this work can be previewed and/or downloaded at the Lobster Eye Satellite Documents Package.

A schematic of a possible satellite, incorporating 3 modules of lobster eye telescopes. Each half side of each module is a portion of a spherical lobster eye telescope.

We have completed an initial design study of a lobster eye telescope to be flown in a small payload satellite. Some of the parameters considered are listed below.

We incorporated these parameters into our ray tracing coded. We first input the Crab nebula spectrum as a typical spectrum of an x-ray source. We then repeat the calculation using the spectrum of the x-ray background. This allows us to calculate the sensitivity of the lobster eye telescope to various strength sources. The performance figures and measurable sources are shown below.

Performance

Measurable Sources

Finally we show two simulated images of the x-ray sky as seen by a lobster eye telescope. The first shows the lmc - a region with a number of extremely bright sources. The second shows a more typical region of sky at high galactic latitude.

X-ray Atomic Physics