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
The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded $3.9 million to researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz to lead the development of a next-generation telescope alignment system for the Medium-Sized Telescopes.
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 14 July 2023, the performance paper of the LST-1 was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ).
On March 6, the LST Collaboration published its first scientific paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), focused on a multi-wavelength study of the unidentified ultra-high-energy gamma-ray source known as LHAASO J2108+5157, and using data from the LST-1.
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 the evening of the 25 March, the Barcelona Raman LIDAR Pathfinder installed on the CTA-North site at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma (Spain) achieved first light.
On 1 June 2020, scientists from the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Consortium announced at the 236th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) that they have detected gamma rays from the Crab Nebula using a prototype telescope proposed for CTA, the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT), proving the viability of the novel telescope design for use in gamma-ray astrophysics.
In its first attempt to detect a gamma-ray source, the Large-Sized Telescope prototype (LST-1) successfully detected its first gamma-ray signal on 23 November 2019 when it pointed to the Crab Nebula.