Construction of a medium-sized Schwarzschild-Couder telescope as a candidate for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: development of the optical alignment system
Abstract
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is an international project for a next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory. CTA, conceived as an array of tens of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, comprising small, medium and large-size telescopes, is aiming to improve on the sensitivity of current-generation experiments by an order of magnitude and provide energy coverage from 20 GeV to more than 300 TeV. The Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) medium-size candidate telescope model features a novel aplanatic two-mirror optical design capable of a wide field-of-view with significantly improved imaging resolution as compared to the traditional Davis-Cotton optics design. Achieving this imaging resolution imposes strict alignment requirements to be accomplished by a dedicated alignment system. In this contribution we present the status of the development of the SC optical alignment system, soon to be materialized in a full-scale prototype SC medium-size telescope at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in southern Arizona.
- Publication:
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arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- September 2015
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.1509.02463
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1509.02463
- Bibcode:
- 2015arXiv150902463N
- Keywords:
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- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- Physics - Optics
- E-Print:
- In Proceedings of the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2015), The Hague, The Netherlands. All CTA contributions at arXiv:1508.05894