On the Optical Characteristics of Solar X-Ray Telescopes: Possible Relation between Vignetting Effect and Mirror Scattering

Since early 90's, the solar X-ray telescopes such as Yohkoh SXT and Hinode XRT have observed coronal magnetic structures on the Sun's surface in the range of about $40'{\times}40'$ field-of-view (FOV) covering the full solar disk. Thus it has been stressed by the scientists that the optical structure of solar telescopes should be designed with care for improving the uniformity over a wide FOV. There would be, however, no unique solution in designing the optical system of a telescope for overcoming perfectly the problem of off-axis response variation. As a consequence, the correction of optical imperfectness of telescopes has become an important calibration step that should be performed beforehand when the observed images are to be used for photometric purposes. In particular, a special care should be taken when performing the temperature analysis with thin and thick filters for flaring activities observed at the periphery of the full FOV. From the analyses of both pre-launch calibration and in-flight observation data, the optical characteristics for describing the performance of solar X-ray telescopes, especially in view of their energy dependence, will be introduced and discussed in our presentation.