The first prototype telescope for the planned Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) has been inaugurated in Berlin. The prototype was designed and built at DESY in an international collaboration involving more than 1000 scientists and engineers from 27 countries.
The CTA is an international €200-million project to observe cosmic γ rays (CERN Courier July/August 2012 p28). Designed to achieve a sensitivity that is 10-times better than existing installations, it will combine three types of telescope, each optimized for its own energy range between a few tens of giga-electron-volts and 300 TeV. The prototype is a full-scale version of the medium-sized telescope (MST) with a tessellated 12-m mirror. Forty MSTs will form the central part of the CTA.
Fully functional mechanically, the prototypes will be used to test many aspects including the drive and safety systems, the understanding of vibrations and deformations, the mirror alignment, telescope pointing and the array control. The results will allow the design of the MSTs to be optimized before their production begins.
Construction of the CTA is expected to commence in 2015 at two sites in the southern and northern hemispheres. The larger southern observatory will include 70–100 telescopes that will be spread over 10 km2 and the smaller observatory in the north will have 20–30 telescopes that will be distributed over 1 km2. The sites will be chosen at the end of this year.
For further information, see www.cta-observatory.org/ and www.desy.de/cta.
