1,137 research outputs found
All Sky Camera for the CTA Atmospheric Calibration work package
The All Sky Camera (ASC) is a passive non-invasive imaging system for rapid night sky atmosphere monitoring. By design, the operation of the ASC will not affect the measurement procedure of the CTA observatory, for which we discuss its application in this report. The data collected should enable improved productivity and increased measurement time for the CTA observatory. The goal of ASC is to identify cloud position, atmosphere attenuation and time evolution of the sky condition, working within the CTA Central Calibration Facilities (CCF) group. Clouds and atmosphere monitoring may allow near-future prediction of the night-sky quality, helping scheduling. Also, in the case of partly cloudy night sky the cameras will identify the uncovered regions of the sky during the operation time, and define potential observable sources that can be measured. By doing so, a higher productivity of the CTA observatory measurements may be possible
Search for tau neutrinos at PeV energies and beyond with the MAGIC telescopes
The MAGIC telescopes, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (2200
a.s.l.) in the Canary Island of La Palma, are placed on the top of a mountain,
from where a window of visibility of about 5 deg in zenith and 80 deg in
azimuth is open in the direction of the surrounding ocean. This permits to
search for a signature of particle showers induced by earth-skimming cosmic tau
neutrinos in the PeV to EeV energy range arising from the ocean. We have
studied the response of MAGIC to such events, employing Monte Carlo simulations
of upward-going tau neutrino showers. The analysis of the shower images shows
that air showers induced by tau neutrinos can be discriminated from the
hadronic background coming from a similar direction. We have calculated the
point source acceptance and the expected event rates, for a sample of generic
neutrino fluxes from photo-hadronic interactions in AGNs. The analysis of about
30 hours of data taken toward the sea leads to a point source sensitivity for
tau neutrinos at the level of the down-going point source analysis of the
Pierre Auger Observatory, if the AUGER observation time is dedicated to a
similar amount by MAGIC.Comment: Proceedings of EPS-HEP 2017, European Physical Society conference on
High Energy Physics, 5-12 July 2017, Venice, Italy. arXiv admin note:
substantial text overlap with arXiv:1708.0614
The Atmospheric Monitoring Strategy for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
The Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Technique (IACT) is unusual in astronomy as
the atmosphere actually forms an intrinsic part of the detector system, with
telescopes indirectly detecting very high energy particles by the generation
and transport of Cherenkov photons deep within the atmosphere. This means that
accurate measurement, characterisation and monitoring of the atmosphere is at
the very heart of successfully operating an IACT system. The Cherenkov
Telescope Array (CTA) will be the next generation IACT observatory with an
ambitious aim to improve the sensitivity of an order of magnitude over current
facilities, along with corresponding improvements in angular and energy
resolution and extended energy coverage, through an array of Large (23m),
Medium (12m) and Small (4m) sized telescopes spread over an area of order
~km. Whole sky coverage will be achieved by operating at two sites: one in
the northern hemisphere and one in the southern hemisphere. This proceedings
will cover the characterisation of the candidate sites and the atmospheric
calibration strategy. CTA will utilise a suite of instrumentation and analysis
techniques for atmospheric modelling and monitoring regarding pointing
forecasts, intelligent pointing selection for the observatory operations and
for offline data correction.Comment: 6 pages. To appear in the proceedings of the Adapting to the
Atmosphere conference 201
Sensitivity for tau neutrinos at PeV energies and beyond with the MAGIC telescopes
The MAGIC telescopes, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (2200
a.s.l.) in the Canary Island of La Palma, are placed on the top of a mountain,
from where a window of visibility of about 5 deg in zenith and 80 deg in
azimuth is open in the direction of the surrounding ocean. This permits to
search for a signature of particle showers induced by earth-skimming cosmic tau
neutrinos in the PeV to EeV energy range arising from the ocean. We have
studied the response of MAGIC to such events, employing Monte Carlo simulations
of upward-going tau neutrino showers. The analysis of the shower images shows
that air showers induced by tau neutrinos can be discriminated from the
hadronic background coming from a similar direction. We have calculated the
point source acceptance and the expected event rates, assuming an incoming tau
neutrino flux consistent with IceCube measurements, and for a sample of generic
neutrino fluxes from photo-hadronic interactions in AGNs. The analysis of about
30 hours of data taken toward the sea leads to a point source sensitivity for
tau neutrinos at the level of the down-going point source analysis of the
Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Proceedings of the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC
2017), Bexco, Busan, Korea,(arXiv:1708.05153
Constraining the Dark Matter decay lifetime with very deep observations of the Perseus cluster with the MAGIC telescopes
We present preliminary results on Dark Matter searches from observations of
the Perseus galaxy cluster with the MAGIC Telescopes. MAGIC is a system of two
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located in the Canary island of La
Palma, Spain. Galaxy clusters are the largest known gravitationally bound
structures in the Universe, with masses of ~10^15 Solar masses. There is strong
evidence that galaxy clusters are Dark Matter dominated objects, and therefore
promising targets for Dark Matter searches, particularly for decay signals.
MAGIC has taken almost 300 hours of data on the Perseus Cluster between 2009
and 2015, the deepest observational campaign on any galaxy cluster performed so
far in the very high energy range of the electromagnetic spectrum. We analyze
here a small sample of this data and search for signs of dark matter in the
mass range between 100 GeV and 20 TeV. We apply a likelihood analysis optimized
for the spectral and morphological features expected in the dark matter decay
signals. This is the first time that a dedicated Dark Matter optimization is
applied in a MAGIC analysis, taking into account the inferred Dark Matter
distribution of the source. The results with the full dataset analysis will be
published soon by the MAGIC Collaboration
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