Čerenkovské dalekohledy

The sensitivity of the SST-1M pair of Cherenkov telescopes at very high energies exceeds that of any existing Cherenkov imaging telescope in the world. This surprising news was presented at a conference in Milan by Jakub Jurýšek. At the Institute of Physics, together with his team, he is developing software that allows stereoscopic reconstruction of observed cosmic gamma-ray showers and subsequent imaging of the sources of these gamma photons in space. 

Unique Cherenkov telescopes have successfully been installed at the Ondřejov Observatory near Prague. There are two telescopes at the site, which are now the largest optical telescopes in the Czech Republic. They have been developed in the frame of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, and evaluated as performing telescopes in the high energy region above 1 TeV.

On Wednesday, February 23, the Cherenkov telescope SST-1M recorded its first events initiated by high-energy particles (of hadronic origin or originating from gamma-rays). Two telescopes are gradually being built at the Ondřejov Observatory since 2021. Among the key institutions involved in those activities are Université de Genève, Instytut Fizyki Jądrowej PAN, Krakow and the Czech Academy of Sciences.