CTA Ireland
An association of Irish Astronomy and Astrophysics researchers working on high-energy astrophysics and promoting Irish participation in the Cherenkov Telescope Array project.
Next Event
CTA Public Event in Dunsink Observatory
Public Open Night Wednesday October 11th 2017
Two talks on the Cherenkov Telescope Array. Gates open at 7:00 pm
Dr Masha Chernyakova:
New frontiers in science with the Cherenkov Telescope Array
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the Major Global Observatory for very High Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy over the next decade and beyond. The scientific potential of CTA is extremely broad: from understanding the role of Relativistic Cosmic Particles to the search for Dark Matter. CTA is an explorer of the extreme universe, probing environments from the immediate neighbourhood of Black Holes to Cosmic Voids on the largest scales. In my talk I will overview the most exiting discoveries that CTA should be able to do.
Prof. John Quinn
The CTA: Instrumentation for Exploring the Very High Energy Universe
The CTA is a next-generation astronomical facility, currently in the design and prototyping phase, for exploring the Very High Energy gamma-ray Universe. The energy range covered by CTA will be from 20 GeV to 300 TeV, allowing for the study of nature’s most powerful particle accelerators, associated with black holes, neutron stars and supernova remnants, in unprecedented detail (for comparison, the LHC at CERN accelerates protons to energies up to 14 TeV). CTA is being developed by a global consortium of scientists and will have two observatories, one in the northern hemisphere on La Palma in the Canary Islands, and the other in the southern hemisphere at ESO’s Paranal site in Chile. Gamma-ray telescopes are usually placed on satellites in space to get above the Earth’s atmosphere, but CTA will actually use the atmosphere to detect gamma rays via the faint flashes of blue Cherenkov light that are produced when gamma rays are destroyed through interactions with air molecules. In this talk an overview will be given of the CTA telescopes and how they work, and the significant role Irish scientists played in developing this exciting young branch of astronomy will be highlighted.
Future Events
This project received funding from the Irish Research Council's New Foundations programme to establish the association and hold meetings during 2017.