A New Era in Gamma-Ray Astronomy with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The MAGIC Cherenkov Telescope for gamma ray astronomy

The Major Atmospheric Gamma ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope (MAGIC) is in commissioning phase and will start to become fully operative by the end of 2003. Located at El Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain), it has the largest reflector area (17 m diameter) of all the existing Cherenkov telescopes. New technologies have been used to reduce the energy threshold for gamma-ray...

A focusing telescope for gamma-ray astronomy

With the development of the Laue Lens, gamma-ray astronomy is presently realizing the step that virtually all branches of astronomy have accomplished since Lippershey’s invention 400 years ago: the focusing telescope. In a Laue lens, gamma-rays interact coherently inside a crystal via Bragg-diffraction; a large number of diffraction crystals are oriented in a way to deviate incident photons ont...

Design concepts for the Cherenkov Telescope Array CTA: an advanced facility for ground-based high-energy gamma-ray astronomy

Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has had a major breakthrough with the impressive results obtained using systems of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. Ground-based gamma-ray astronomy has a huge potential in astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology. CTA is an international initiative to build the next generation instrument, with a factor of 5–10 improvement in sensitivity in the 100 ...

Gamma-Ray Astronomy in the Compton Era

Ground based gamma-ray astronomy with Cherenkov Telescopes

Very-high-energy (>100 GeV) γ-ray astronomy is emerging as an important discipline in both high energy astrophysics and astro-particle physics. This field is currently dominated by Imaging Atmospheric-Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) and arrays of these telescopes. Such arrays have achieved the best angular resolution and energy flux sensitivity in the γ-ray domain and are still far from the fundam...