The Max-Planck-Institut fuer extraterrestrische Physik (MPE) in
Garching, Germany, operates the large X-ray beam line facility
PANTER for testing astronomical systems. At PANTER a number
of telescopes like EXOSAT, ROSAT, SAX, JET-X, ABRIXAS, XMM
and SWIFT operating in the soft energy range (0.02 - 15 keV)
have been successfully calibrated. In the present paper we report
on an important upgrade recently implemented that enables the
calibration of hard X-ray optics (from 15 up to 50 keV). Currently
hard X-ray optics based on single and multilayer coating are being
developed for several future X-ray missions. The hard X-ray calibrations at PANTER are carried out by a high energy source based on an electron gun and several anodes, able to cover the energy range from 4.5 up to 50 keV. It provides fluxes up to 104 counts/sec/cm2 at the instrument chamber with a stability better than 1%. As detector a pn-CCD camera operating between 0.2 and 50 keV and a collecting area of 36 cm2 is used. Taking into account the high energy resolution of the CCD (145 eV at 6 keV), a very easy way to operate the facility in hard X-ray is in energy-dispersive mode (i.e. with a broad-band beam). A double crystal monochromator is also available providing energies up to 20 keV. In this paper we present the first results obtained by using PANTER for hard X-ray characterizations, performed on prototype multilayer optics developed by the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera (OAB), Milano, Italy, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), Cambridge, MA, USA.
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