(English/Spanish) This week, CTAO Managing Director, Stuart McMuldroch, and Construction Programme Manager, Volker Heinz, traveled to the Canary Islands for a productive visit with the hosting partners at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and colleagues from the CTAO Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration. The team was warmly welcomed at the IAC Headquarters in Tenerife … Continued
On September 23, the CTAO ACADA Collaboration achieved yet another milestone when the CTAO Central Organisation officially approved and closed out the Critical Design Review (CDR) of the Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACADA) system. The approval of the CDR, an in-depth evaluation to ensure the system design meets all the requirements of the Observatory, marks a new phase in the project, moving from testing to integrating the advanced software packages that will operate the arrays.
Bologna, Italy – On Thursday, 18 April, during the closing session of the CTAO Science Symposium at Teatro Duse in Bologna, the Managing Director of the CTAO, Dr. Stuart McMuldroch, officially announced the Observatory’s new phase of growth. Supported by the 30M Euro endorsement by the CTAO’s governing bodies in September 2023, this new period … Continued
On 15 December, the Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration announced through an Astronomer’s Telegram (ATel) the detection of the source OP 313 at very high energies with the LST-1.
In September and October, two teams of scientists and engineers traveled to the CTAO-North site in La Palma, Spain, to conduct pivotal tests of ACADA system on the LST-1.
On 6 September 2023, the CTAO’s two governing bodies, the Board of Governmental Representatives (BGR) and the CTAO gGmbH Council, gathered to agree on the significant forthcoming measures to advance the Observatory to its construction phase. During the meeting, both bodies unanimously certified their commitment to the progress of the CTAO, including a foreseen endorsement of up to approximately 30 million euro for 2024. This represents a significant increase in annual funding, which will enable the Observatory to not only move forward with substantial infrastructure development but also to double its workforce.
On 14 July 2023, the performance paper of the LST-1 was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ).
On 20 September, nearly 60 representatives from the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Project and the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), as well as from the broader Spanish astronomical community, participated in a conference called “CTA Spanish Day” to share and analyze the latest project news and advances from the different Spanish groups.
The CTAO released the final layouts that define the geographical position of the elements (telescopes, calibration systems and atmospheric characterization devices) that will compose the two CTAO arrays according to the approved Alpha Configuration. The particular configuration is the result of a thorough optimization process meant to maximize the scientific performance of the two CTAO arrays.
On September 22, the Barcelona Raman LIDAR (BRL) Pathfinder installed on the CTAO-North site at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain) detected the volcano dust plume while monitoring the atmosphere. These are the first results made public by the BRL team and the most accurate results for the characterization of the atmosphere provided by any current operative LIDAR system on-site.