Proposal for Participation in Cherenkov Telescope Array Consortium

by Prof. Masahiro Teshima (MPI for Physics)

Wednesday 21 Oct 2009, 17:00 → 18:00 Europe/Berlin

High energy gamma-ray astronomy is a newly emerging and very successful branch of astrophysics. Exciting results have been obtained by the current generation Cherenkov telescope systems, like H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS and CANGAROO. The design study of the very large Cherenkov telescope array system (CTA) with a sensitivity about an order of magnitude better than current instruments and a wider energy coverage from a few tens of GeV to over 100TeV is on going. This new facility CTA will be operated as an observatory for the science community. This observatory will reveal an order of magnitude more sources. Due to its higher sensitivity and better angular resolution it will be able to detect new classes of objects and phenomena that have not been visible until now. The scientific potential and status of the design study of CTA and the contribution / participation of the MPI group in this project will be discussed.