In September, the installation of mirrors on three large telescopes (Large-Sized Telescope – LST) was completed on the Canary Island of La Palma. These telescopes will become part of the future Cherenkov Telescope Array observatory.
Two Cherenkov telescopes help us understand extreme cosmic phenomena through very high-energy gamma rays; they are currently the most sensitive devices of their kind in the world. The prototypes, which were developed by an international team involving Czech scientists, are now in Ondřejov. This is an exceptional opportunity for Czech astrophysicists, as the telescopes may be moved abroad in the future.
Mirrors from the Joint Laboratory of Optics of Palacký University in Olomouc and the Institute of Physics (SLO) are a key part of several cosmic ray detectors located around the world. Petr Schovánek was at the very beginning of a number of important international projects in this field and continues to look for ways to improve, simplify and cheapen the production of mirror systems while maintaining their parameters.
