11.04.2014

Start of negotiations for southern CTA site

The realisation of the Cherenkov Telescope Array moves a major step forward: At a meeting of the CTA Resource Board in Munich on Thursday representatives from twelve partner countries decided to start negotiations with Chile and Namibia, to define the location for the CTA experiment in the southern hemisphere. As a third option a location in Argentina is being considered.
 

Visualisation of the Cherenkov Telescope Array.

“The determination of the site for CTA is time-critical for the speedy start of construction of this international project,” says Professor Christian Stegmann, head of DESY´s location in Zeuthen, where DESY´s participation in the CTA project is based. “The decision to now enter detailed negotiations for the larger site in the southern hemisphere brings the CTA project a big step forward.”

The Cherenkov Telescope Array is the next big project for the future of astroparticle physics. With an area of up to ten square kilometres for up to 100 telescopes in the southern hemisphere and a smaller one with about 25 telescopes in the northern hemisphere , scientists want to measure high-energy gamma radiation from space and collect valuable information about giant cosmic particle accelerators.

As preparation for the project, the international CTA research team, including more than thousand scientists from 28 countries, has investigated possible locations for the facility as well as prototypes for the different-sized telescopes and the highly sensitive cameras. DESY is the largest group within the project and is responsible for the design and construction of the medium-sized telescopes that have a mirror diameter of about twelve meters.

The recent decision for the southern sites was made by representatives of the funding countries (Argentina, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Namibia, Poland, South Africa, Spain and Switzerland) after a scientific evaluation of a Site Selection Committee. The selected locations are Aar in Namibia, ESO (European Southern Observatory) in Chile, as well as Leoncito in Argentina as a third possibility. A final selection will be made by end of this year on the basis of the negotiations. Although the decision on the smaller northern location is still pending due to clarifying questions, the 200-million-Euro project is well on its way to start construction of the first telescopes in 2016.