Verification of the Optical System of the 9.7-m Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope

Abstract

For the first time in the history of ground-based $\gamma$-ray astronomy, the on-axis performance of the dual mirror, aspheric, aplanatic Schwarzschild-Couder optical system has been demonstrated in a $9.7$-m aperture imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope. The novel design of the prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope (pSCT) is motivated by the need of the next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory to have the ability to perform wide ($\ge 8^{\circ }$) field-of-view observations simultaneously with superior imaging of atmospheric cascades (resolution of $0.067^{\circ }$ per pixel or better). The pSCT design, if implemented in the CTA installation, has the potential to improve significantly both the $\gamma$-ray angular resolution and the off-axis sensitivity of the observatory, reaching nearly the theoretical limit of the technique and thereby making a major impact on the CTA observatory sky survey programs, follow-up observations of multi-messenger transients with poorly known initial localization, as well as on the spatially resolved spectroscopic studies of extended $\gamma$-ray sources. This contribution reports on the initial alignment procedures and point-spread-function results for the challenging segmented aspheric primary and secondary mirrors of the pSCT.

arXiv comment19 pages, 11 figures, proceedings for SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2020, Online Only

References in corpus (6)

• Astrometry.net: Blind astrometric calibration of arbitrary astronomical images
• Design Concepts for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Wide field aplanatic two-mirror telescopes for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy
• FlashCam: a fully-digital camera for the medium-sized telescopes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Construction of a medium-sized Schwarzschild-Couder telescope as a candidate for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: development of the optical alignment system
• Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope for the Cherenkov Telescope Array: Commissioning Status of the Optical System

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Detection of the Crab Nebula with the 9.7 m Prototype Schwarzschild-Couder Telescope
• Mirror production for the Cherenkov telescopes of the ASTRI Mini-Array and of the MST project for the Cherenkov Telescope Array
• Using Muon Rings for the Calibration of the Cherenkov Telescope Array: An Analytical Solution for the Dual-Mirror Telescope Using Vector Geometry