World's largest 'Cherenkov' telescope launched in Namibia

July 28, 2012 00:17

The huge "Cherenkov" telescope, the size of two lawn tennis courts and the biggest of its kind, has started to capture cosmic rays from its base in Namibia, scientists have announced.

The 600-tonne telescope structure with its 28-metre (92-feet) mirror will be observing the most violent and extreme phenomena of the universe in very high energy gamma rays.

It "not only provides the largest mirror area among instruments of this type worldwide, but also resolves the cascade images at unprecedented detail, with four times more pixels per sky area compared to the smaller telescopes", Pascal Vincent, one of the scientists, said in a statement released in Europe.

The so-called "Cherenkov" HESS-II telescope is situated about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of the Namibian capital Windhoek.

"The successful commissioning of the new HESS II telescope represents a big step forward for the astronomical community as a whole and for southern Africa as a prime location for this field of astronomy," said Werner Hofmann of Germany's Max Planck Institute.

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