Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2019

18 MARCH-APRIL 2019 SPACE CHRONICLES ESO to host Cherenkov Telescope Array-South at Paranal by ESO T he Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next-generation ground-based instrument de- signed to detect very high energy gamma rays, with sites in both the southern and northern hemispheres. Gamma rays are electromagnetic ra- diation of very high energy, emitted by the hottest and most extreme ob- jects in the Universe — supermassive black holes, supernovae and maybe even remnants of the Big Bang. On 19 December 2018, Federico Ferrini, Managing Director of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), T his image illustrates all three classes of the 99 telescopes planned for the southern hemisphere at ESO's Paranal Observatory, as viewed from the centre of the array. This rendering is not an accurate representa- tion of the final array layout, but it illustrates the enormous scale of the CTA telescopes and the array itself. [CTA/M-A. Besel/IAC (G.P. Diaz)/ESO]