The idea of searching for optical signals from extraterrestrial civilizations has become increasingly popular over the last five years, with dedicated projects at a number of observatories. The method relies on the detection of a brief (few ns), intense light pulse with fast photon detectors. Ground-based gamma-ray telescopes such as the Whipple 10m, providing a large mirror area and equipped with an array of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), are ideal instruments for this kind of observation if the background of cosmic-ray events can be rejected. We report here on a method for searching for optical SETI pulses, using background discrimination techniques based on the image shape.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0506758,
title = {Optical SETI with Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes},
author = {J. Holder and P. Ashworth and S. LeBohec and H. J. Rose and T. C. Weekes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0506758},
year = {2007}
}