Abstract

We intend to set up an imaging air Cherenkov telescope with low cost, but high performance design for remote operation. The goal is to dedicate this gamma-ray telescope to long-term monitoring observations of nearby, bright blazars at very high energies (VHE). We will (i) search for orbital modulation of the blazar emission due to supermassive black hole binaries, (ii) study the statistics of flares and their physical origin, and (iii) correlate the data with observations of flares with higher sensitivity telescopes such as MAGIC, VERITAS, and H.E.S.S. Common observations with theWhipple 10m-monitoring telescope will be the first step towards a future 24 h-monitoring of selected sources. This idea was presented for the first time in [1]. The telescope design is based on a full technological upgrade of one of the former telescopes of the HEGRA collaboration, still located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos on the Canarian Island of La Palma (Spain). After this upgrade, the telescope will be operated robotic, its sensitivity will greatly be improved and a much lower energy threshold below 350GeV will be achieved

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