Wolter-Teleskop - Deutsches Museum

Visual aids
The Wolter telescope The X-ray Satellite ROSAT The financing of ROSAT
The Wolter telescope enables X-ray images
of celestial objects to be made. It is based
on an invention by the physicist Hans Wolter
in 1952, who in fact wanted to build
an X-ray microscope. As X-ray radiation is
absorbed in the Earth’s atmosphere, such
a telescope must be operated in space. The
Wolter telescope shown here was launched
in 1979 by a sounding rocket, in order to
observe the nebula Puppis A, which was
created by a supernova explosion. The
results produced the first X-ray colour image
of a cosmic object. The X-ray satellite
ROSAT, which has been circling the Earth
between 1990 and 1999, contains a larger,
more highly developed version of this telescope.
ROSAT has changed the astronomer’s
view of the universe. More than 140
000 cosmic X-ray sources have been detected,
among them the hot gas clouds created
by supernova explosions. Only 5000 X-ray
sources were known before ROSAT.
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ROSAT contains the largest and most
precise X-ray telescope flown to date. The
telescope and satellite were developed and
built in the 1980’s under the scientific
directionof Joachim Trümper at the Max
Planck institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
(MPE).
The core of the ROSAT scientific program
is a complete X-ray survey of the sky, which
was conducted in 1990/1991. This has been
complemented by detailed ex-aminations
of particularly interesting cosmic X-ray
sources, and over 5000 such observations
have been made to date.
The principal areas of research in the MPE
in Garching near Munich are the physics
of plasmas in the region surrounding the
Earth, and astronomical observations in the
infra-red, X-ray and gamma-ray wavebands,
which are not accessible at the Earth’s
surface.
In 1983 the German Aerospace Center
(DLR), at the direction of the German
Federal Ministry of Research, commissioned
the development of the ROSAT
research satellite.
The Dornier company, now part of the
European Aeronautic Defence and Space
Company (EADS), undertook responsibility
for the development and construction
of the satellite.
The total cost of ROSAT amounts to 560
million DM, of which 260 million DM
was provided by the Federal Ministry of
Research. The Max Planck Society and the
DLR contributed a further 80 million DM.
The remaining 220 million DM were supplied
by collabo-rators from abroad.
The USA assumed responsibility, through
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Ad-ministration), for the satellite launch,
and both England and the USA provided
instruments for ROSAT.
Caption
Film animation. The ROSAT
X-ray satellite with its
Wolter telescope in space.
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