Telescope, Inaugurated at Whipple Observatory
Cherenkov Telescope Array | 2019 Jan 17
Scientists to inaugurate prototype Schwarzschild-Couder TelescopeOn 17 January 2019, a prototype telescope proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA), the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) is being unveiled in a special inauguration event at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in Amado, Arizona. A dual-mirrored Medium-Sized Telescope (MST), the SCT is proposed to cover the middle of CTA’s energy range (80 GeV – 50 TeV). ...
The SCT's complex dual-mirror optical system improves on the single-mirror designs traditionally used in gamma-ray telescopes by dramatically enhancing the optical quality of their focused light over a large region of the sky and by enabling the use of compact, highly-efficient photo-sensors in the telescope camera. ...
The CTA Observatory (CTAO) will consist of 118 telescopes split between a southern array in Paranal, Chile and a northern array on the island of La Palma, Spain. Three classes of telescopes (Small-, Medium- and Large-Sized Telescopes) will be used to detect gamma rays in the energy range 20 GeV to 300 TeV with about ten times increased sensitivity compared to any current observatory. Notable for providing improved gamma-ray angular resolution and its very-high-resolution camera (>11,000 pixels), the SCT is proposed for the medium-sized CTA telescopes, which are considered to be the “workhorses” of the arrays with 15 planned for the north site and 25 for the south site. ...
Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics | 2019 Jan 16
