Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA, or Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, CTAO) is a Cherenkov gamma-ray telescope under construction that will consist of two arrays of ground-based telescopes for observation of gamma rays in the range of 20 GeV to 300 TeV. One array is to be on the Atacama Desert in Chile (99 dishes, near Paranal Observatory) and the other in Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (ORM) in the Canary Islands (19 dishes). Their aim is to spot high-energy gamma-ray photons by observing the Cherenkov radiation they trigger in the upper atmosphere. The method is indirect, but offers a much larger collecting area than is practical with a space mission, which would be necessary to directly detect the photons of interest. The dishes are not all identical, different subsets covering different bands:

Prototype dishes for the various bands are in operation. Some are to be Schwarzschild-Couder Telescopes (SCTs), for which a 9.7-meter prototype (pSCT) has been constructed. An LST prototype, LST1, is in operation at ORM.