World’s largest Cherenkov telescope begins operation
The High Energy Stereoscopic System [HESS] II began operation on 26 July this year. The Namibia-based Cherenkov telescope will, in conjunction with the four smaller telescopes which make up the HESS observatory, study high-energy gamma ray sources such as pulsars, supermassive black holes and supernovae.
Weighing in at around 600 tons, with its 28 meter mirror – the size of two adjacent tennis courts – HESS II is now the world’s largest Cherenkov telescope.
“The new telescope not only provides the largest mirror area among instruments of this type worldwide, but also resolves the cascade images at unprecedented detail, with four times more pixels per sky area compared to the smaller telescopes,” says Pascal Vincent, a member of the French team who are responsible for the telescope’s photo sensor package.
HESS II will explore the sky through gamma rays of energies in the range of tens of Giga-electronvolts. This energy region covers the so far poorly-explored area between the domains of space-based observatories and current ground-level telescopes; as such, HESS II has a significant discovery potential. Notably, objects seen by the four smaller HESS telescopes in the last few years are not observable at other wavelengths, and could represent new types of celestial bodies. HESS II will explore and categorise these further.
“The successful commissioning of the new HESS II telescope represents a big step forward for the scientists of HESS, for the astronomical community as a whole, and for Southern Africa as a prime location for this field of astronomy,” says Werner Hofmann, the spokesperson of the project.
For more information, please visit the HESS website.
