Speaker
Jim Hinton
(University of Leicester)
Description
The enormous potential of the imaging atmospheric Cherenkov technique (IACT) for high energy astrophysics has been demonstrated by the currently operating HESS, MAGIC and VERITAS telescope arrays. The technique provides excellent angular resolution at high energies and huge collection area in comparison with space-based instruments such as Fermi-LAT. The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a global project (27 nations, >1000 scientists) to build the successor to these instruments: a facility-level Observatory for photon astronomy at the highest energies (~20 GeV to ~300 TeV). CTA will make major advances in sensitivity, energy range, angular resolution and field of view relative to current instruments. I in this talk I will discuss some of the scientific motivations for a major new IACT array and present briefly the technical status of the CTA project.
