Size Telescopes Research Articles

Expected performance of the ASTRI mini-array in the framework of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) Observatory is a world-wide project for the ground-based study of the sources of the highest energy photons. By adopting telescopes of three different size categories it will cover the wide energy range from tens of GeV up to hundreds of TeV, limited only by the source physical properties and the gamma absorption by the extragalactic background light. The full sky coverage will be assured by two arrays, one in each hemisphere. An array of small size telescopes (SSTs), covering the highest energy region (3-100 TeV), the region most flux limited for current imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, is planned to be deployed at the southern CTA site in the first phase of the CTA project. The ASTRI collaboration has developed a prototype of a dual mirror SST equipped with a SiPM-based focal plane (ASTRI SST-2M) and has proposed to install a mini-array of nine of such telescopes at the CTA southern site (the ASTRI mini-array). In order to study the expected performance and the scientific capabilities of different telescope configurations, full Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the shower development in the atmosphere for both gammas and hadronic background have been performed, followed by detailed simulations of the telescopes. In this work the expected performance of the ASTRI mini-array in terms of sensitivity, angular and energy resolution are presented and discussed.

Simulation of the ASTRI two-mirrors small-size telescope prototype for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a world-wide project to build a new generation ground-based gamma-ray instrument operating in the energy range from some tens of GeV to above 100 TeV. To ensure full sky coverage CTA will consist of two arrays of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs), one in the southern hemisphere and another one in the northern hemisphere. CTA has just completed the design phase and it is entering in the pre-production one that includes the development of telescope precursor mini-arrays. ASTRI is an ongoing project, to develop and install at the southern CTA site one of such mini-arrays composed by nine dual-mirror small size telescopes equipped with an innovative camera based on silicon photomultiplier sensors. The end-to-end telescope prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, has been recently inaugurated at the Serra La Nave observing station, on Mount Etna, Italy. ASTRI SST-2M expected performance has been carefully studied using a full Monte Carlo simulation of the shower development in the atmosphere and detector response. Simulated data have been analyzed using the traditional Hillas moment analysis to obtain the expected angular and energy resolution. Simulation results, together with the comparison with the available experimental measurements, are shown.

Simulated gamma-ray pulse profile of the Crab pulsar with the Cherenkov Telescope Array

We present simulations of the very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray light curve of the Crab pulsar as observed by the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). The CTA pulse profile of the Crab pulsar is simulated with the specific goal of determining the accuracy of the position of the interpulse. We fit the pulse shape obtained by the MAGIC telescope with a three-Gaussian template and rescale it to account for the different CTA instrumental and observational configurations. Simulations are performed for different configurations of CTA and for the ASTRI mini-array. The northern CTA configuration will provide an improvement of a factor of ~3 in accuracy with an observing time comparable to that of MAGIC (73 hours). Unless the VHE spectrum above 1 TeV behaves differently from what we presently know, unreasonably long observing times are required for a significant detection of the pulsations of the Crab pulsar with the high-energy-range sub-arrays. We also found that an independent VHE timing analysis is feasible with Large Size Telescopes (LSTs). CTA will provide a significant improvement in determining the VHE pulse shape parameters necessary to constrain theoretical models of the gamma-ray emission of the Crab pulsar. One of such parameters is the shift in phase between peaks in the pulse profile at VHE and in other energy bands that, if detected, may point to different locations of the emission regions.

Drifting asteroid fragments around WD 1145+017

We have obtained extensive photometric observations of the polluted white dwarf WD 1145+017 which has been reported to be transited by at least one, and perhaps several, large asteroids (or, planetesimals) with dust emission. We have carried out 53 observation sessions on 37 nights, totaling 192 hours, of this 17th magnitude star with small to modest size telescopes covering the interval 2015 November 1 to 2016 January 21. In all, we have detected some 237 significant dips in flux. Periodograms of the data reveal a significant periodicity of 4.5004 hours that is consistent with the dominant ("A") period detected with K2. The folded light curve at this period shows there is an hour-long depression in flux with a mean depth of nearly 10%. This depression is comprised of a series of shorter and sometimes deeper dips that do not always occur at exactly the same orbital phase, and which would be unresolvable with K2. In fact, we find numerous dips in flux at other orbital phases. Nearly all of the dips associated with this activity appear to drift systematically in phase with respect to the "A" period by about 2.5 minutes per day with a dispersion of ~0.5 min/d, corresponding to a mean drift period of 4.4928 hours. In all, we can track approximately 15 of these drifting features. There is no detection of the "B"-"F" periods found with K2, but if they remain at the K2 levels we would not expect to have seen them. We explain the drifting motion as that of smaller bodies (`fragments') that break off from the asteroid and go into a slightly smaller orbit than that of the asteroid. If our interpretation is correct, we can use the drift rate to determine the mass of the asteroid. Under that scenario, we find that the mass of the asteroid is M_a ~ = 10^23 grams, or about 1/10th the mass of Ceres, with an uncertainty of about a factor of 2.

Large size SiPM matrix for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes applications

SiPM photo detectors are nowadays commonly used in many applications. For large size telescopes like MAGIC or the future Large Size Telescope (LST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) project, a pixel size of some square centimeters is needed. An analog amplifier and sum stage was built and characterized. A large and compact SiPM matrix prototype, with the associated focusing optics, was assembled into a monolithic light detector with an active area of 3cm2. The performance of the electronics is tailored for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) applications, with fast signal and adequate signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio.

An innovative SiPM-based camera for gamma-ray astronomy with the small size telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

A prototype camera for one of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) projects for the small size telescopes, the single mirror Small Size Telescope (SST-1M), has been designed and is under construction. The camera is a hexagonal matrix of 1296 large area (95 mm2) hexagonal silicon photomultipliers. The sensors are grouped into 108 modules of 12 pixels each, hosting a preamplifier board and a slow-control board. Among its various functions, this latter implements a compensation logic that adjusts the bias voltage of each sensor as a function of temperature. The fully digital readout and trigger system, DigiCam, is based on the latest generation of FPGAs, featuring a high number of high speed I/O interfaces, allowing high data transfer rates in an extremely compact design.

The ASTRI mini-array within the future Cherenkov Telescope Array

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a large collaborative effort aimed at the design and operation of an observatory dedicated to very high-energy gamma-ray astrophysics in the energy range from a few tens of GeV to above 100 TeV, which will yield about an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity with respect to the current major arrays (H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS). Within this framework, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics is leading the ASTRI project, whose main goals are the design and installation on Mt. Etna (Sicily) of an end-to-end dual-mirror prototype of the CTA small size telescope (SST) and the installation at the CTA Southern site of a dual-mirror SST mini-array composed of nine units with a relative distance of about 300 m. The innovative dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optical solution adopted for the ASTRI Project allows us to substantially reduce the telescope plate-scale and, therefore, to adopt silicon photo-multipliers as light detectors. The ASTRI mini-array is a wider international effort. The mini-array, sensitive in the energy range 1-100 TeV and beyond with an angular resolution of a few arcmin and an energy resolution of about 10-15%, is well suited to study relatively bright sources (a few $\times 10^{-12}$erg cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$ at 10 TeV) at very high energy. Prominent sources such as extreme blazars, nearby well-known BL Lac objects, Galactic pulsar wind nebulae, supernovae remnants, micro-quasars, and the Galactic Center can be observed in a previously unexplored energy range. The ASTRI mini-array will extend the current IACTs sensitivity well above a few tens of TeV and, at the same time, will allow us to compare our results on a few selected targets with those of current (HAWC) and future high-altitude extensive air-shower detectors.

Development of the quality control system of the readout electronics for the large size telescope of the Cherenkov Telescope Array observatory

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation VHE γ-ray observatory which will improve the currently available sensitivity by a factor of 10 in the range 100GeV to 10TeV. The array consists of different types of telescopes, called large size telescope (LST), medium size telescope (MST) and small size telescope (SST). A LST prototype is currently being built and will be installed at the Observatorio Roque de los Muchachos, island of La Palma, Canary islands, Spain. The readout system for the LST prototype has been designed and around 300 readout boards will be produced in the coming months. In this note we describe an automated quality control system able to measure basic performance parameters and quickly identify faulty boards.

Achromatic interfero-coronagraph with variable rotational shear: reducing of star leakage effect, white light nulling with lab prototype

Stellar coronagraphs with a small inner working angle have limited possibilities to detect exoplanets due to the star leakage effect caused by incomplete suppression of the star of finite angular size. We consider an improved instrument for direct imaging of exoplanets: common-path achromatic interfero-coronagraph with variable rotational shear (CP-ARC). CP-ARC reduces the star leakage effect by several orders of magnitude (with small angles of rotational shear relative to a fixed angle of 180 deg) with telescope size more than 1 m. Operation capacity of CP-ARC was experimentally verified by laser light nulling and white light nulling with lab prototype treated.

The role of the hadron initiated single electromagnetic subcascades in IACT observations

The sensitivity of imaging air Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) worsens significantly at low energies because the γ/hadron separation becomes much more complex. In this paper we study the impact of single electromagnetic subcascade events on the efficiency of γ/hadron separation for a system of four IACTs using Monte Carlo simulations. The studies are done for two different altitudes of the observatory, three different telescope sizes and two hadron interaction models (GHEISHA and FLUKA). More than 90% of the single electromagnetic proton-induced subcascade events are showers with primary energy below 200 GeV, regardless of the trigger threshold. The estimated efficiency of γ/hadron separation using the FLUKA model is similar to results obtained using the GHEISHA model. Nevertheless, for at least one triggered telescope only, a higher fraction of single electromagnetic subcascade events was obtained from the FLUKA model. Finally, calculated quality factors are anti-correlated with the contributions of false γ-ray events in proton initiated showers. Therefore, the occurrence of single electromagnetic subcascade events is one of the main reasons for the worsening of primary γ-ray selection efficiency at low energies.

Extragalactic sources in Cosmic Microwave Background maps

We discuss the potential of a next generation space-borne CMB experiment for studies of extragalactic sources with reference to COrE+, a project submitted to ESA in response to the call for a Medium-size mission (M4). We consider three possible options for the telescope size: 1 m, 1.5 m and 2 m (although the last option is probably impractical, given the M4 boundary conditions). The proposed instrument will be far more sensitive than Planck and will have a diffraction-limited angular resolution. These properties imply that even the 1 m telescope option will perform substantially better than Planck for studies of extragalactic sources. The source detection limits as a function of frequency have been estimated by means of realistic simulations taking into account all the relevant foregrounds. Predictions for the various classes of extragalactic sources are based on up-to-date models. The most significant improvements over Planck results are presented for each option. COrE+ will provide much larger samples of truly local star-forming galaxies (by about a factor of 8 for the 1 m telescope, of 17 for 1.5 m, of 30 for 2 m), making possible analyses of the properties of galaxies (luminosity functions, dust mass functions, star formation rate functions, dust temperature distributions, etc.) across the Hubble sequence. Even more interestingly, COrE+ will detect, at |b| > 30°, thousands of strongly gravitationally lensed galaxies (about 2,000, 6,000 and 13,000 for the 1 m, 1.5 m and 2 m options, respectively). Such large samples are of extraordinary astrophysical and cosmological value in many fields. Moreover, COrE+ high frequency maps will be optimally suited to pick up proto-clusters of dusty galaxies, i.e. to investigate the evolution of large scale structure at larger redshifts than can be reached by other means. Thanks to its high sensitivity COrE+ will also yield a spectacular advance in the blind detection of extragalactic sources in polarization: we expect that it will detect up to a factor of 40 (1 m option) or of 160 (1.5 m option) more radio sources than can be detected by Planck and, for the first time, from several tens (1 m option) to a few hundreds (1.5 m option) of star forming galaxies. This will open a new window for studies of the global properties of magnetic fields in star forming galaxies and of their relationships with star formation rates.

The Hvar survey for roAp stars

The 60 known rapidly oscillating Ap (roAp) stars are excellent laboratories to test pulsation models in the presence of stellar magnetic fields. Our survey is dedicated to search for new group members in the Northern Hemisphere. We attempt to increase the number of known chemically peculiar stars that are known to be pulsationally unstable. About 40 h of new CCD photometric data of 21 roAp candidates, observed at the 1m Austrian-Croatian Telescope (Hvar Observatory) are presented. We carefully analysed these to search for pulsations in the frequency range of up to 10mHz. No new roAp star was detected among the observed targets. The distribution of the upper limits for roAp-like variations is similar to that of previoius similar efforts using photomultipliers and comparable telescope sizes. In addition to photometric observations, we need to consolidate spectroscopic information to select suitable targets.

The single mirror small size telescope camera for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The UniGe group has proposed an innovative approach for the camera of a Davies–Cotton telescope of dish diameter 4m and focal length 5.6m, which would require single pixel SiPM with a size exceeding any commercial device. In collaboration with Hamamatsu, we have developed a large area (93.6mm2) hexagonal SiPM operated in Geiger Avalanche mode. Coupled to a hollow hexagonal light concentrator, the sensitive area is extended to the required pixel size. The large area and the corresponding high capacitance (>800pF) of these sensors poses many difficulties in terms of operation. The characterization of these devices together with the dedicated electronics will be presented.

Design, optimization and characterization of the light concentrators of the single-mirror small size telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array

The focal-plane cameras of γ-ray telescopes frequently use light concentrators in front of the light sensors. The purpose of these concentrators is to increase the effective area of the camera as well as to reduce the stray light coming at large incident angles. These light concentrators are usually based on the Winston cone design. In this contribution we present the design of a hexagonal hollow light concentrator with a lateral profile optimized using a cubic Bézier function to achieve a higher collection efficiency in the angular region of interest. The design presented here is optimized for a Davies–Cotton telescope with a primary mirror of about 4m in diameter and a focal length of 5.6m. The described concentrators are part of an innovative camera made up of silicon-photomultiplier sensors, although a similar approach can be used for other sizes of single-mirror telescopes with different camera sensors, including photomultipliers. The challenge of our approach is to achieve a cost-effective design suitable for standard industrial production of both the plastic concentrator substrate and the reflective coating. At the same time we maximize the optical performance. In this paper we also describe the optical set-up to measure the absolute collection efficiency of the light concentrators and demonstrate our good understanding of the measured data using a professional ray-tracing simulation.

Characterization of New Hexagonal Large Area MPPCs

Photomultipliers (PMTs) are the standard detector for construction of the current generation of imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs). Despite impressive improvements in Quantum Efficiency (QE) and reliability in the last years, these devices suffer from the limitation of being unable to operate in the partially illuminated sky (during full or partial moon periods) as the excess light leads to a significant increase in the rate of ageing of the devices themselves and consequently limit the camera life. Large area Multi-Pixel Photon Counters (MPPCs) - also known as Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes (G-APDs) or Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) - are a viable alternative and are commercially available from different producers in various types and dimensions. The maturity of this technology for application to Cherenkov Astronomy has already been demonstrated by the FACT telescope. The Small Size Telescopes (SSTs) of Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory foresee the usage of MPPCs. One of the designs for a 4 m-diameter dish Davies-Cotton telescope engages custom designed large-area hexagonal MPPCs. This is the first time that an hexagonal device with area of $95~\hbox{mm}^{2}$ divided in 4 channels is made available. These photosensors, coupled with open non imaging light concentrators with a 24 degrees cut-off angle, offer a performing alternative to standard PMTs. In this paper we show the results of their characterization together with the comparison with other commercially available devices such as the Hamamatsu S10985-050C (2x2 array of $3~\hbox{mm} \times 3~\hbox{mm}$ MPPCs) and the SensL $\mu$ SB30035-X13-E15.

The next generation Cherenkov Telescope Array observatory: CTA

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a large collaborative effort aimed at the design and operation of an observatory dedicated to the very high-energy gamma-ray astrophysics in the energy range 30GeV–100TeV, which will improve by about one order of magnitude the sensitivity with respect to the current major arrays (H.E.S.S., MAGIC, and VERITAS). In order to achieve such improved performance, for both the northern and southern CTA sites, four units of 23m diameter Large Size Telescopes (LSTs) will be deployed close to the centre of the array with telescopes separated by about 100m. A larger number (about 25 units) of 12m Medium Size Telescopes (MSTs, separated by about 150m), will cover a larger area. The southern site will also include up to 24 Schwarzschild–Couder dual-mirror medium-size Telescopes (SCTs) with the primary mirror diameter of 9.5m.Above a few TeV, the Cherenkov light intensity is such that showers can be detected even well outside the light pool by telescopes significantly smaller than the MSTs. To achieve the required sensitivity at high energies, a huge area on the ground needs to be covered by Small Size Telescopes (SSTs) with a field of view of about 10° and an angular resolution of about 0.2°, making the dual-mirror configuration very effective. The SST sub-array will be composed of 50–70 telescopes with a mirror area of about 5–10m2 and about 300m spacing, distributed across an area of about 10km2.In this presentation we will focus on the innovative solution for the optical design of the medium and small size telescopes based on a dual-mirror configuration. This layout will allow us to reduce the dimension and the weight of the camera at the focal plane of the telescope, to adopt Silicon-based photo-multipliers as light detectors thanks to the reduced plate-scale, and to have an optimal imaging resolution on a wide field of view.

Search for Southern Galactic Be Star Candidates

We present the result of a search for southern Galactic Be star candidates within the group of miscellaneous variables of the ASAS-2 catalog of variable stars, using statistical, morphological, photometric, and color criteria. This search lead us to obtain a catalog of 213 new Be star candidates. The I-band light curves of these candidates show outbursts (Type-1 stars) only in 9% of the sample, and stochastic variations (Type-4 stars) in 91% of the sample. We do not find stars showing clear high and low states (Type-2 stars) or showing outbursts and high and low states simultaneously (Type-1/Type-2 stars). Our sample of southern Galactic Be star candidates provide valuable new bright targets for high resolution spectroscopic studies with small/medium size telescopes.

VLBI observations of the radio quasar J2228+0110 atz= 5.95 and other field sources in multiple-phase-centre mode

A patch of sky in the SDSS Stripe 82 was observed at 1.6 GHz with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) using the European VLBI Network (EVN). The data were correlated at the EVN software correlator at JIVE (SFXC). There are fifteen known mJy/sub-mJy radio sources in the target field defined by the primary beam size of a typical 30-m class EVN radio telescope. The source of particular interest is a recently identified high-redshift radio quasar J222843.54+011032.2 (J2228+0110) at redshift z=5.95. Our aim was to investigate the milli-arcsecond (mas) scale properties of all the VLBI-detectable sources within this primary beam area with a diameter of 20 arcmin. The source J2228+0110 was detected with VLBI with a brightness temperature T_b>10^8 K, supporting the active galactic nucleus (AGN) origin of its radio emission, which is conclusive evidence that the source is a radio quasar. In addition, two other target sources were also detected, one of them with no redshift information. Their brightness temperature values (T_b >10^7 K) measured with VLBI suggest a non-thermal synchrotron radiation origin for their radio emission. The detection rate of 20% is broadly consistent with other wide-field VLBI experiments carried out recently. We also derived the accurate equatorial coordinates of the three detected sources using the phase-referencing technique. This experiment is an early attempt of a wide-field science project with SFXC, paving the way for the EVN to conduct a large-scale VLBI survey in the multiple-phase-centre mode.

Evaluation of the optical cross talk level in the SiPMs adopted in ASTRI SST-2M Cherenkov Camera using EASIROC front-end electronics

ASTRI (Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana), is a flagship project of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research whose main goal is the design and construction of an end-to-end prototype of the Small Size of Telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array. The prototype, named ASTRI SST-2M, will adopt a wide field dual mirror optical system in a Schwarzschild-Couder configuration to explore the VHE range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The camera at the focal plane is based on Silicon Photo-Multipliers detectors which is an innovative solution for the detection astronomical Cherenkov light.This contribution reports some preliminary results on the evaluation of the optical cross talk level among the SiPM pixels foreseen for the ASTRI SST-2M camera.

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) is a young organization dedicated to time-domain observations at optical and (potentially) near-IR wavelengths. To this end, LCOGT is constructing a worldwide network of telescopes, including the two 2 m Faulkes telescopes, as many as 17 × 1 m telescopes, and as many as 23 × 40 cm telescopes. These telescopes initially will be outfitted for imaging and (excepting the 40 cm telescopes) spectroscopy at wavelengths between the atmospheric UV cutoff and the roughly 1-μm limit of silicon detectors. Since the first of LCOGT’s 1 m telescopes are now being deployed, we lay out here LCOGT’s scientific goals and the requirements that these goals place on network architecture and performance, we summarize the network’s present and projected level of development, and we describe our expected schedule for completing it. In the bulk of the paper, we describe in detail the technical approaches that we have adopted to attain desired performance. In particular, we discuss our choices for the number and location of network sites, for the number and sizes of telescopes, for the specifications of the first generation of instruments, for the software that will schedule and control the network’s telescopes and reduce and archive its data, and for the structure of the scientific and educational programs for which the network will provide observations.