The Optical Monitor is a part of the JET-X experiment which will fly on board the Soviet satellite Spectrum-X-Gamma. The reflector is a Ritchey-Chretien with an aperture of 260 mm, and there are two frame transfer CCD detectors. The scientific objectives of the Optical Monitor are observations in the optical and UV bands simultaneously with X-ray, the real time identification of X-ray sources with mv less than or equal to 22 and detection of their variability, the improvement of the post-facto spacecraft attitude reconstruction for the X-ray observations, and the serendipitous mode search for microvariability of the bright stars to develop the research field of asteroseismology. Since long integration times are required for the faint object detection, a dedicated servo loop operating on the secondary mirror is developed for the stabilization of the images against the drift of the satellite.
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