Courtesy of G. Pérez, IAC (SMM)

A computer model of what the CTA will look like.

Photo By Rene Ong - CTA

An atmoscope measures atmospheric conditions near Meteor Crater.

An international effort to measure gamma radiation from space is looking for an observation site and Arizona is one of the final candidates.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory is a proposed collection of telescopes that can observe and measure massive amounts of energy. Released from sources like black holes and supernovae, gamma radiation is the strongest type of radiation and a lot of it is produced in space.

Thankfully, our atmosphere protects us from most of this radiation’s harmful effects. But scientists still don’t know much about gamma radiation origins. An international group supporting CTA hopes to change that, but they need a host site to build the observatory.

“CTA is an advanced technology facility,” said Rene Ong, professor of Astronomy and Physics at UCLA and is co-spokesperson for the CTA.

“What we’re looking for, the CTA project, is a large surface area," Ong said. "Land has to be relatively flat at altitude, but not necessarily at very high altitude. And the skies have to be clear and dark without a large amount of light pollution from nearby cities. So fortunately in Arizona, we have all those things.”        

Partnering with the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, CTA has chosen two Arizona locations as finalists for a site, one near Meteor Crater and one south of Seligman. Two total sites are needed, one in each hemisphere, to have a complete survey of the sky.

CTA hopes to determine the sites by the end of 2015 with both arrays operational by 2020.