{"id":6980,"date":"2020-09-17T13:32:50","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T12:32:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=6980"},"modified":"2020-09-17T13:32:50","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T12:32:50","slug":"ctao-and-the-high-energy-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/ctao-and-the-high-energy-universe\/6980\/","title":{"rendered":"CTAO and the high energy Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

CTAO Project Scientist, Dr Roberta Zanin, spoke to The Innovation Platform<\/em> about the Cherenkov Telescope Array\u2019s role in areas such as dark matter detection, gravitational wave observation, and multi-messenger astronomy.<\/h2>\n

Once operational, the Cherenkov Telescope Array<\/a> (CTA) will be ten times more sensitive than current-generation ground-based gamma-ray detectors. It will also have unprecedented accuracy in its detection of high-energy gamma rays, while its use of more than 100 telescopes located in the northern and southern hemispheres will enable it to detect gamma rays over a larger area and a wider range of views than with current gamma-ray telescopes.<\/p>\n

Together, the northern and southern CTA arrays will constitute the CTA Observatory (CTAO), which will be the first ground-based gamma-ray observatory open to the worldwide astronomical and particle physics communities as a resource for data from unique, high-energy astronomical observations.<\/p>\n

CTAO\u2019s Project Scientist, Dr Roberta Zanin, spoke to The Innovation Platform<\/em><\/a> about CTA\u2019s role in areas such as dark matter detection, gravitational wave observation, and multi-messenger astronomy.<\/p>\n

What is the current status of the CTA? Are you still on course to begin operations in 2022? Has the current COVID-19 pandemic held things up?<\/h3>\n

The CTA Observatory (CTAO) will enter the construction phase hopefully next year when the final, legal, CTAO European Research Infrastructure Consortium<\/a> (ERIC) will be established. The current COVID-19 pandemic has delayed this milestone by a few months.<\/p>\n

The construction phase is envisaged to last for about five years. Regular operations will, therefore, not start before 2026.<\/p>\n

The follow-up observations of gravitational wave (GW) events have been assigned the highest priority in CTA\u2019s key science project on transient phenomena. What will this involve?<\/h3>\n

The GW follow-up programme envisaged for CTA consists of two main steps:<\/p>\n