Detection of the Crab Nebula with the 9.7 m Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope
Abstract
The Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (SCT) is a telescope concept proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array. It employs a dual-mirror optical design to remove comatic aberrations over an field of view, and a high-density silicon photomultiplier camera (with a pixel resolution of 4 arcmin) to record Cherenkov emission from cosmic ray and gamma-ray initiated particle cascades in the atmosphere. The prototype SCT (pSCT), comprising a 9.7 m diameter primary mirror and a partially instrumented camera with 1536 pixels, has been constructed at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. The telescope was inaugurated in January 2019, with commissioning continuing throughout 2019. We describe the first campaign of observations with the pSCT, conducted in January and February of 2020, and demonstrate the detection of gamma-ray emission from the Crab Nebula with a statistical significance of .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2012.08448,
title = {Detection of the Crab Nebula with the 9.7 m Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope},
author = {C. B. Adams and R. Alfaro and G. Ambrosi and M. Ambrosio and C. Aramo and T. Arlen and P. I. Batista and W. Benbow and B. Bertucci and E. Bissaldi and J. Biteau and M. Bitossi and A. Boiano and C. Bonavolontà and R. Bose and A. Bouvier and A. Brill and A. M. Brown and J. H. Buckley and K. Byrum and R. A. Cameron and R. Canestrari and M. Capasso and M. Caprai and C. E. Covault and D. Depaoli and M. Errando and S. Fegan and Q. Feng and E. Fiandrini and G. Foote and P. Fortin and S. Funk and A. Furniss and F. Garfias and A. Gent and N. Giglietto and F. Giordano and E. Giro and M. M. González and V. Guarino and R. Halliday and O. Hervet and J. Holder and G. Hughes and T. B. Humensky and M. Ionica and A. Iriarte and W. Jin and C. A. Johnson and P. Kaaret and D. Kieda and B. Kim and A. Kuznetsov and J. S. Lapington and F. Licciulli and S. Loporchio and V. Mason and K. Meagher and T. Meures and B. A. W. Mode and S. A. I. Mognet and R. Mukherjee and T. Nguyen and D. Nieto and A. Okumura and N. Otte and N. La Palombara and F. R. Pantaleo and R. Paoletti and G. Pareschi and A. Petrashyk and F. Di Pierro and E. Pueschel and P. T. Reynolds and D. Ribeiro and G. Richards and E. Roache and D. Ross and J. Rousselle and A. Rugliancich and J. Ruíz-Díaz-Soto and M. Santander and S. Schlenstedt and M. Schneider and S. Scuderi and R. Shang and G. Sironi and B. Stevenson and L. Stiaccini and H. Tajima and L. P. Taylor and J. Thornhill and L. Tosti and G. Tovmassian and V. Vagelli and M. Valentino and J. Vandenbroucke and V. V. Vassiliev and L. Di Venere and S. P. Wakely and J. J. Watson and R. White and P. Wilcox and D. A. Williams and M. Wood and P. Yu and A. Zink},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.08448},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
13 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, submitted to Astroparticle Physics