Abstract
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international project for a next-generation ground-based gamma ray observatory, aiming to improve on the sensitivity of current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and provide energy coverage from 30 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The 9.7m Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) candidate medium-size telescope for CTA exploits a novel aplanatic two-mirror optical design that provides a large field of view of 8 degrees and substantially improves the off-axis performance giving better angular resolution across all of the field of view with respect to single-mirror telescopes. The realization of the SC optical design implies the challenging production of large aspherical mirrors accompanied by a submillimeter-precision custom alignment system. In this contribution we report on the status of the implementation of the optical system on a prototype 9.7 m SC telescope located at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Journal | Proceedings of Science |
| State | Published - 2017 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference, ICRC 2017 - Bexco, Busan, Korea, Republic of Duration: Jul 10 2017 → Jul 20 2017 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was conducted in the context of the SCT project of the CTA Consortium. The project has been made possible by funding provided through the U.S. National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation program (MRI award 1229792) and from the agencies and organizations listed here: http://www.cta-observatory.org/consortium_acknowledgments, which we gratefully acknowledge. We particularly recognize the exceptional contributions to the project made by the technical support staff at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory.
Publisher Copyright:
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