MAGIC (telescope)
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| MAGIC 1 | |
 The MAGIC Telescope |
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| Organization: | MAGIC collaboration |
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| Location: | La Palma, Canary Islands |
| Altitude: | 2200 m |
| Wavelength: | Gamma rays |
| Built: | 2004 |
| Telescope style: | Reflector |
| Diameter: | 17m |
| Collecting area: | 240 m² |
| Focal length: | f/D 1.03 |
| Mounting: | metal structure |
| Website: | http://wwwmagic.mppmu.mpg.de/ |
This article is about the telescope. For other uses, see Magic.
MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope) is a Gamma ray telescope sited at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands at about 2200 m above sea level. It detects the particle shower released by the cosmic gamma-rays, and also Cherenkov light.
It can detect cosmic gamma rays with energies between 30 GeV and 30 TeV; ground-based gamma ray telescopes are normally sensitive to energies above 300 GeV, while satellites detect on the order of keV up to GeV).
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[edit] Aims
The goals of the telescope are to detect the following, among other things:
- Active Galactic Nuclei
- Supernova remnants
- Some unidentified EGRET Sources
- Gamma ray bursts
[edit] Specifications
The telescope has the following specifications:
- A collecting area 239 m² consisting of 50 cm x 50 cm Aluminium reflectors
- A lightweight carbon fibre frame
- A detector consisting of 396 separate hexagonal photomultiplier detectors in the center (diameter: 2.54 cm) as well as 180 photomultiplier detection arrays around the edge (diameter: 3.81 cm).
- Data is transferred by fibre optic cables
- Signal digitalization is done via a analog-digital converter (frequency 300 MHz)
- The weight of the whole telescope is 40,000 kg
- A reaction time of about 20 seconds to point to any section of the sky
[edit] Collaborating Institutions
- Institut de Física d'Altes Energies (IFAE), University of Barcelona ,Spain.
- Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ,Spain
- Institut für Physik, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
- Crimean Astrophysical Observatory,Nauchny, Ukraine
- University of California, Davis, USA
- Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain
- Division of Experimental Physics, University of Lodz, Poland
- Max-Planck-Institute for Physics, Munich, Germany
- Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita di Padova and INFN sez. di Padova, Italy
- Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Siena and INFN sez. di Pisa, Italy
- Institute for Nuclear Research an Nuclear Energy, Sofia, Bulgaria
- Tuorla Observatory Pikkiö, Finland
- Depatimento di Fisica, Universita di Udine and INFN sez. di Trieste, Italy
- University Würzburg, Germany
- Yerevan Physics Institut, Cosmic ray Division, Yerevan, Armenia
- Institut for Particle Physics, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland
[edit] References
[edit] External links
