The MAGIC gamma-ray telescope July 11, 2006
Posted by dorigo in astronomy, news, personal, physics, science.trackback
By reading the thesis of a student who graduates next week, and of whom I have been designated referee (controrelatore), I finally got to win my lazyness and know a bit more about the MAGIC experiment. Long overdue… Here is a link to the webpage of the endeavour: http://magic.mppmu.mpg.de/
The MAGIC telescope is located on top of one of the Canary islands, La Palma, at 2245 meters above sea level. It is composed of almost 1000 aluminum plates, machined to acquire a spherical surface with a precision sufficient to bring to focus the cherenkov light from extended air showers due to cosmic rays and photons impinging on the earth atmosphere; they are arranged in a roughly circular matrix with a parabolic shape. The total area of the mirror surface is of 234 square meters: the telescope is a real giant.
Why looking for the Cherenkov light from very high energy cosmic rays ? Well, what matters is the production of energetic photons, with energy above a few GeV all the way up to billions of GeV, which may be emitted by active galactic nuclei or supernova explosions -in stupendous energy bursts of gamma rays and x-rays. By catching the signal of these rare energetic photons, one hopes to understand the physics of their production and improve our model of the universe.
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