The future headquarters will be located within the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) – Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory premises, in a building shared with the Bologna University Department of Physics and Astronomy.
A reconstruction of some of the telescopes that will animate the Cherenkov Telescope Array. (Foto: G. Pérez, IAC, SMM)
After the Data Centre of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), another international project is now based in Emilia-Romagna, which is set to establish its role as research hub. The future headquarters of the CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array), the largest and most sensitive gamma ray observatory in the world, with a network of 118 telescopes to study the high-energy Universe, will be established by the end of 2020 in Bologna as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) . A project of great scientific value which is involving over 1,400 scientists and engineers from 31 different countries around the world.
The CTA project involves the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN): in fact, the Observatory headquarters will be located within the INAF – Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory premises, in a building shared with the Bologna University Department of Physics and Astronomy. The data collected by the telescopes, mainly located in the Andes, in Chile, and on La Palma Island, part of the Canary Islands, will be distributed by the data centre in Zeuthen, Germany, but the central office of the organisation will be in Bologna.
Tens of Italian researchers, engineers and technicians are working with specialised private companies on the Cherenkov Telescope Array project. Once operational, the observatory’s complex instruments will allow to collect data on gamma rays, the strongest form of electromagnetic space radiations, able to provide information essential to understand some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena.