X-ray picture of the Sun taken with Fresnel zone plates

Extract

It is well known that Fresnel zone plates act as a lens with a focal length inversely proportional to the wavelength. At Professor Moellenstedt's Institute of Applied Physics in Tübingen, a technique has been developed to manufacture micro-zone plates electronoptically from Buckbee-Mears zone plates. These micro-zone plates have a diameter of 0·5 mm approximately, 38 zones and a focal length of 30 cm for X-rays of nearly 50 Å. Their resolving power is of the order of a few seconds of arc (Einighammer et al., 1966). One finds, however, experimentally as well as theoretically that the sharply defined image is surrounded by a halo having a diameter of a few minutes of arc for the above-mentioned zone plates. Whereas for a point source the intensity of a halo is poor and therefore unimportant, for extended sources it becomes large as a result of the superposition of the contributions from the individual points of the source. This has been demonstrated by the photometer curves of the images of circular sources by Einighammer (1966) (Figure 1). The halo is not noticeable in case of very narrow sources (curves a and b). With increasing diameter of the source the intensity of the halo rapidly increases (curves c and d). For the same source the brightness distribution of the halo agrees practically with the one obtained by a pinhole camera, provided the diameter of the hole and that of the zone plate are equal; these brightness distributions are represented by the dashed lines c′ d′ in Figure 1.