A normal incidence multimirror telescope, the X‐ray Ultraviolet Imager, for high resolution imaging of the solar atmosphere in the soft X‐ray/XUV region, is being developed as part of the scientific payload of the NASA Orbiting Solar Laboratory. The X‐ray Ultraviolet Imager is formed by two units: a high resolution telescope (0.25 arcsec pixel size and 8×8 arcmin2field of view) and a wide field one (2.3 arcsec pixel size and 5×5 solar radii2field of view). The two systems complement each other and allow a full coverage of solar features from the small scale (200 km on the sun) to the global phenomena. Each system consists of 8 channels with multilayer mirrors, imaging at different wavelengths. In each channel the mirror coating is optimized to select a narrow spectroscopic window corresponding to an intense line in the region 40–400 A˚. In order to provide imaging and temperature diagnostics from the chromosphere to the upper corona, 8 wavelengths are chosen to cover the broad temperature range from 105to 107K. Four images, two high resolution and two full disk ones, are simultaneously obtained by the X‐ray Ultraviolet Imager, at a cadence which in flares can be of 0.4–1 s.