During the week of 4 May, the CTAO Central Organisation co-hosted, along with the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), the University of Bologna, and the Galileo National Telescope, the International Scientific Committee of the Canary Islands Observatories (CCI, in Spanish) at the home of the CTAO Headquarters in Bologna, Italy. With its northern hemisphere … Continued
On 23 January, AES Andes announced on their website that they have cancelled plans to build the INNA Project, an industrial green hydrogen and green ammonia project planned near the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Paranal Observatory, to focus on their renewable energy portfolio instead. Formal confirmation will arrive once the project is officially withdrawn from Chile’s Environmental … Continued
On 14 October, the inaugural Werner Hofmann Scientific Award was presented at the CTAO Construction Meeting that is taking place this week at the CTAO Science Data Management Centre (SDMC) in Zeuthen, Germany. Following a rigorous nomination and review process by an international panel of experts, the award was given to Shotaro Abe, a researcher … Continued
La Palma, Spain — The international CTAO LST Collaboration released remarkable findings from observations of GRB 221009A—the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever recorded. The results were published on 23 July by the renowned journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJ Letters). The publication presents in-depth observations conducted in 2022 with the Large-Sized Telescope (LST) prototype, the … Continued
From May 12 to 16, the CTAO Consortium gathered for its spring meeting in Garching, Germany, uniting experts from across the globe to discuss scientific advances, plans, and collaborative opportunities. Hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP), this year’s meeting focused on discussing advances for the Observatory, in preparation for the CTAO’s upcoming … Continued
On May 12, the CTAO Central Organisation announced the launch of the Werner Hofmann Scientific Award during the CTAO Consortium Meeting. The award aims to recognise outstanding PhD research in very high-energy gamma-ray astrophysics. “The award is for PhD students who are currently enrolled or have completed their thesis within 12 months of the call … Continued
In January, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) publicly raised the alarm about the threat that the industrial megaproject INNA posed to the world’s darkest and clearest skies for astronomy, those of ESO’s Paranal Observatory and the site of the CTAO’s southern hemisphere array (CTAO-South). The project — by AES Andes, a subsidiary of the U.S. … Continued
On September 16 and 17, the kick-off meeting for the Astrophysics Centre for Multimessenger studies in Europe (ACME) was held in Paris, France. ACME is a EU-funded project coordinated by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) that aims to realize an ambitious coordinated European-wide optimization of the accessibility and cohesion between multiple leading … Continued
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.