Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T12:49:35.658Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

MACHETE: A transit Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope to survey half of the Very High Energy γ-ray sky

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2016

Rubén López-Coto
Affiliation:
Institut de Fisica dAltes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) Spain email: rlopez@ifae.es
Juan Cortina
Affiliation:
Institut de Fisica dAltes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) Spain email: rlopez@ifae.es
Abelardo Moralejo
Affiliation:
Institut de Fisica dAltes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) Spain email: rlopez@ifae.es
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Current Cherenkov Telescopes for VHE gamma ray astrophysics are pointing instruments with a field of view up to a few tens of deg2. We propose to build an array of two non-steerable telescopes with a FoV of 5×60 deg2 oriented along the meridian. Roughly half of the sky drifts through this FoV in a year. We have performed a MC simulation to estimate the performance of this instrument, which we dub MACHETE. The sensitivity that MACHETE would achieve after 5 years of operation for every source in this half of the sky is comparable to the sensitivity that a current IACT achieves for a specific source after a 50 h devoted observation. The analysis energy threshold would be 150 GeV and the angular resolution 0.1 deg. For astronomical objects that transit over MACHETE for a specific night, it would achieve an integral sensitivity of 12% of Crab in a night. This makes MACHETE a powerful tool to trigger observations of variable sources at VHE or any other wavelengths.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2016 

References

Cortina, J., López-Coto, R., & Moralejo, A. 2016, APh 72 4654 Google Scholar