Related papers: A New Mirror Alignment System for the VERITAS Tele…
Identification of Cherenkov light generated by muons has been suggested as a promising way to dramatically improve the background rejection power of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) arrays at high energies. However, muon…
The MAGIC 17m-diameter Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescope (IACT) has been commissioned beginning of 2005. The telescope has been designed to achieve the lower detection energy threshold ever obtained with an IACT, about 50 GeV. A new window in…
We present a procedure to optimize the offset angle (usually also known as the wobble distance) and the signal integration region for the observations and analysis of extended sources by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) such…
(Abridged) Context. To directly image rocky exoplanets in reflected (polarized) light, future space- and ground-based high-contrast imagers and telescopes aim to reach extreme contrasts at close separations from the star. However, the…
Recent advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology have made UAVs an attractive possibility as an airborne calibration platform for astronomical facilities. This is especially true for arrays of telescopes spread over a large area…
Photomultipliers (PMTs) are currently adopted for the photodetector plane of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). Even though PMT quantum efficiency has improved impressively in the recent years, one of the main limitation for…
The high energy end of gamma-ray source spectra might provide important clues regarding the nature of the processes involved in gamma-ray emission. Several galactic sources with hard emission spectra extending up to more than 30TeV have…
The current generation of Imaging Atmospheric telescopes (IACTs) has demonstrated the power of this observational technique, providing high sensitivity and an angular resolution of $\sim0.1^{\circ}$ per event above an energy threshold of…
The effective mirror area of an imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope is a crucial key parameter for trigger threshold determination and energy calibration. It is usually calculated by 3D ray-tracing simulation using a simplified…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the planned next-generation instrument for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, covering a photon energy range of ~20 GeV to above 100 TeV. CTA will consist of the order of 100 telescopes of three sizes,…
Over the last decade, the Imaging Air Cerenkov technique has proven itself to be an extremely powerful means to study very energetic gamma-radiation from a number of astrophysical sources in a regime which is not practically accessible to…
A new optical design concept of telescopes to provide an aberration-free, wide field, unvignetted flat focal plane is described. The system employs three aspheric mirrors to remove aberrations, and provides a semi-circular field of view…
VERITAS is a new, major ground-based gamma-ray observatory designed to significantly advance our understanding of extreme astrophysical processes in the universe. The observatory comprises seven large-aperture (12m diameter) Cherenkov…
Understanding the sources, acceleration mechanisms, and propagation of cosmic rays is an active area of research in astro-particle physics. Measuring the spectrum and elemental composition of cosmic rays on earth can help solve this…
In gamma ray astronomy, the energy range from sub-100GeV to TeV is crucial due to where there is a gap between space experiments and ground-based ones. In addition, observations in this energy range are expected to provide more details…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a project for a next-generation observatory for very high energy (GeV-TeV) ground-based gamma-ray astronomy, currently in its design phase, and foreseen to be operative a few years from now. Several…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the major global observatory for VHE gamma-ray astronomy over the next decade and beyond. It will be an explorer of the extreme universe, with a broad scientific potential: from understanding the…
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes have long been viewed as potential light collectors to be used for long baseline optical intensity interferometry observations. Intensity interferometry, as implemented with Cherenkov telescopes, is…
The VERITAS Cherenkov telescope array has been fully operational since Fall 2007 and has fulfilled or outperformed its design specifications. We are preparing an upgrade program with the goal to lower the energy threshold and improve the…
Astronomical transients are intrinsically interesting things to study. Fast optical transients (microsecond timescale) are a largely unexplored field of optical astronomy mainly due to the fact that large optical telescopes are…