Wide--Field X--ray Monitoring with Lobster--Eye Telescopes

Hudec R.$^1$, Inneman A.$^2$, and Pina L.$^3$

$^1$Astronomical Institute, Ondrejov, Czech Republic\newline
$^2$Center for Advanced X--ray Technologies, Reflex s.r.o., Prague, Czech Republic\newline
$^3$Czech Technical University, Faculty of Nuclear Science, Prague, Czech Republic



The X--ray telescopes in recent use are based mostly on the Wolter
type of X--ray optics. This type of X--ray lenses is well suited for
pointed observations of selected targets, but is not suitable for
surveys and monitoring because of rather limited field of view of
order of one degree or less.

We will refer on novel wide field X--ray telescopes with high
sensitivity as well as large field of view of order of 1 000 square
degrees or even more. The first prototypes of these innovative
Lobster--eye X--ray telescope prototypes of both Angel as well as
Schmidt arrangements have been already designed, manufactured, and
tested. The results are very promising, allowing the proposals for
space projects with very wide--field Lobster--eye X--ray optics to be
considered.

The Lobster--eye X--ray telescopes will monitor the sky with
unprecedent sensitivity and high angular resolution better than 1
arcmin. These telescopes will hence play an important role in
monitoring and study of AGNs, , but also other scientific areas will
be essentially affected such as supernova explosions, binary sources,
blazars, X-ray novae, X-ray flares on stars, X--ray transients, X--ray
afterglows of Gamma Ray Bursts, cataclysmic variables etc.