Matching a curved focal plane with CCD's - Wide field imaging of glancing incidence X-ray telescopes

The design of a wide field imaging camera suitable for use with a glancing incidence X-ray telescope is complicated by the sharply concave nature of the optimum focal surface of such a telescope. Such a camera made up of a mosaic of CCDs is being designed which is intended for flight aboard the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF). The design rationale and tradeoffs are discussed, and the layout for the imaging CCD array is presented. The related issue of optimizing performance of transmission objective gratings is also discussed, and the array of CCD orientations suitable for this problem is presented.