Bologna, Italy — On 20 July, the Netherlands officially joined the CTAO ERIC as an Observer. The admission, which was unanimously approved by the CTAO ERIC Council, reinforces the strong, long-standing partnership between the Dutch scientific community and the Observatory. With the addition of the Netherlands, the CTAO ERIC is now supported by a growing international coalition comprising 11 countries and one intergovernmental organisation.
Under the CTAO ERIC Statutes, the Netherlands will hold Observer status for an initial period of three years. In this capacity, the Dutch delegation will be entitled to attend both the Council and the Administrative and Finance Committee, participating in key activities as the Observatory advances through its critical construction phase.
“The Netherlands is pleased to join the CTAO ERIC as an Observer; this marks a significant milestone for our scientific community that has been actively contributing to the CTAO project since its inception in 2007,” said Saskia Matheussen, member of the Dutch Research Council (NWO), who will represent the Netherlands at the CTAO ERIC Council. “Observer status acknowledges this long-standing engagement and provides a strong foundation for closer cooperation in the years ahead. We look forward to working with our international partners to unlock the full scientific potential of the CTAO and to exploring the path towards full membership in the future.”
The Netherlands has consistently demonstrated a robust commitment to the project. Through the NWO, the country served as an Associate Member in the former CTAO’s legal entity Council and provided multi-year funding during the pre-construction phase.
This support continues into the current construction phase, bringing their combined previous and ongoing in-kind contributions to approximately €3 million. Now, backed by NWO and NOVA grants, the Netherlands is providing hardware for the Medium-Sized Telescopes (MSTs) and co-producing more than 37 Small-Sized Telescope (SST) cameras. For the latter, the Dutch team is responsible for assembling the focal plane arrays, coordinating the software, and contributing to the testing, calibration, and commissioning of the cameras.
Dutch team members Jacco Vink and Sera Markoff from the University of Amsterdam have led efforts to build interest within the Dutch scientific community, later joined by Manuela Vecchi and Andrey Baryshev (University of Groningen). Markoff also served as the CTAO Consortium’s Multiwavelength/Multimessenger Working Group Coordinator (2016-2018), while Vecchi held the role of Dark Matter Working Group Coordinator (2022-2023) and is currently the Physics Coordinator.
The Council’s complete consensus underscores the collective desire to keep the Netherlands closely integrated into the Observatory’s governance and strategic direction.
“The unanimous approval by the Council reflects the immense respect we have for the Dutch contribution to the CTAO,” stated Francisco Colomer, Chair of the CTAO ERIC Council. “The Netherlands has been a dedicated partner since the very beginning. Formalising their presence as an Observer is a vital step in facilitating their continued integration into our shared endeavours.”
Stuart McMuldroch, Director General of the CTAO ERIC, added: “The Netherlands brings invaluable technical and scientific expertise to the CTAO. Having them formally at the table strengthens our collaborative efforts and ensures their insights continue to help shape the future of the world’s leading gamma-ray observatory.”
With this new status, the Netherlands joins a robust international coalition committed to advancing high-energy astrophysics. The Observatory’s funding Members are Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the European Southern Observatory (ESO), France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Switzerland. Further countries — Australia, Brazil, Japan, South Africa, and the United States — are engaged in the process of joining the CTAO ERIC as Strategic Partners or Third Parties. Together with the Netherlands as its newest Observer, this global partnership will continue to drive the construction of the world’s largest and most sensitive ground-based gamma-ray observatory, with telescope arrays in La Palma (Spain) and the Atacama Desert (Chile).
The CTAO (Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory; www.ctao.org) will be the world’s largest and most powerful observatory for gamma-ray astronomy. The CTAO’s unparalleled accuracy and broad energy range (20 GeV- 300 TeV) will help to address some of the most perplexing questions in astrophysics, falling under three major themes: understanding the origin and role of relativistic cosmic particles; probing extreme environments, such as black holes or neutron stars; and exploring frontiers in physics, searching for dark matter or deviations from Einstein’s theory of relativity. Additionally, the CTAO will play a key role in both multi-wavelength and multi-messenger fields in the coming decades thanks to its enhanced performance, which will allow it to provide fundamental gamma-ray information in the quest to probe the most extreme scenarios.
To cover its broad energy range, the CTAO will use three types of telescopes: the Large-Sized Telescopes (LST), the Medium-Sized Telescopes (MST) and the Small-Sized Telescopes (SST). More than 60 telescopes will be distributed between two telescope array sites: CTAO-North in the northern hemisphere at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias’ (IAC’s) Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma (Spain), and CTAO-South in the southern hemisphere at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert (Chile). The Headquarters of the CTAO is hosted by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Bologna (Italy), and the Science Data Management Centre (SDMC) is hosted by the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Zeuthen (Germany).
The CTAO is a Big Data project. The Observatory will generate hundreds of petabytes (PB) of data in a year (~12 PB after compression). Based on its commitment to Open Science, the CTAO will be the first gamma-ray observatory of its kind to operate as an open, proposal-driven observatory providing public access to its high-level science data and software products.
The CTAO was included in the 2008 roadmap of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) and promoted to a Landmark project in 2018. Moreover, it is a top-ranked priority amongst new ground-based infrastructure projects in ASTRONET’s “Roadmap 2022-2035: A Strategic Plan for European Astronomy.”
The CTAO Central Organisation (legally, the CTAO ERIC) is in charge of the construction and operation of the Observatory. Thus, it is made up of the groups and people dedicated to the management and administration of the Observatory’s development and the overall project, science, computing and systems engineering activities. The high-level organisational structure is broken into four main groups: Director’s Office, Construction and Development Office, Science Office, and Administration Office. The Central Organisation is responsible for managing the CTAO’s four sites: the Headquarters in Bologna (Italy), the SDMC in Zeuthen (Germany) and the two telescope arrays in La Palma (Spain) and the Atacama Desert (Chile).
This group works in close cooperation with partners from around the world toward the development of the Observatory. Major partners include In-Kind Contribution Collaborations that are developing essential hardware and software, in addition to the CTAO Consortium, an international group of researchers who works on the scientific exploitation of the Observatory.
Alba Fernández-Barral, CTAO Chief Communications Officer
alba.fernandezbarral@cta-observatory.org (English, Spanish, Italian)
+39-051-6357-270
Read the NOVA press release on its website.