Four giant gamma-ray telescopes inaugurated on La Palma as CTAO expands
Four 23-meter Cherenkov telescopes were inaugurated on La Palma’s Roque de los Muchachos, forming the LST Subarray of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory.
On the summit ridge of Roque de los Muchachos, four new 23-meter Cherenkov telescopes were officially opened as the LST Subarray of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). Each instrument comprises 198 identical hexagonal mirror facets and will detect high-energy gamma radiation from distant galaxies. Masahori Teshima of the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik described the project as the culmination of more than 15 years of global collaboration and technological development, stressing its potential to study extreme environments such as supermassive black holes, neutron stars, the sources of cosmic rays and the nature of dark matter.
A 2018 test of the first telescope recorded gamma rays from a galaxy eight billion light-years away, setting a new record. CTAO aims to expand to 64 telescopes across sites in La Palma and the Atacama Desert in Chile by 2030, providing full-sky coverage for high-energy astrophysics.
Why it matters
The new array will let scientists probe the universe’s most energetic phenomena and search for clues about dark matter.
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