Winner : Project H.E.S.S.
A new glimpse at the highest-energy Universe
Coordinator: Prof Werner Hofmann
Participating Countries: Germany, Czech Republic, UK, Poland, France, Ireland, South Africa, Armenia
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) – an array of four big “Cherenkov” telescopes built and operated in Namibia by a European consortium together with African partners – has in the last years revolutionized astronomy at the very highest energies of the electromagnetic spectrum, several orders of magnitude beyond the energy range accessible to satellite-based instruments.
The telescopes detect light emitted when cosmic gamma rays with tera electron volt energies – about a million times higher than the energies of normal light - are absorbed in the Earth’s atmosphere. By reconstructing the trajectory of the gamma rays, an image of the very-high-energy gamma-ray sky is generated. In its first years of operation, H.E.S.S. results have provided a number of breakthroughs in this young field of astronomy, such as the first resolved image of a supernova shock wave acting as a cosmic particle accelerator, the first survey of the central region of our Galaxy revealing a large number of novel gamma-ray sources, the detailed study of high-energy radiation from the centre of our Galaxy, or the discovery of a stellar black hole – a “microquasar” – generating gamma rays. The H.E.S.S. results reveal entirely new views of a “nonthermal” universe, governed by processes acting at energies well beyond the energy scales provided by even the hottest stars in the Cosmos.
The H.E.S.S. project involves about 100 scientists from Germany, France, the UK, Ireland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Armenia, South Africa and Namibia. They have designed and built the instrument, have developed the complex software for data acquisition and data analysis, and are operating the telescopes for about 1000 hours each year, when the sky is dark enough to see the faint gamma-ray traces. The project also provides excellent training opportunities for young scientists.
Led By:
Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik
Saupfercheckweg 1, Heidelberg, Germany.
Contact:
Prof Werner Hofmann
Partners:
Dr Michael Punch, Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3/CNRS), France.
Dr Paula Chadwick, University of Durham, United Kingdom.
Prof Thomas Lohse, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (UBER), Germany.
Prof Götz Heinzelmann, Universität Hamburg (Uhamburg), Germany.
Prof Stefan Wagner, Universität Heidelberg (LSW) Germany.
Prof Reinhard Schlickeiser, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Ubochum), Germany.
Prof Christian Stegmann, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (UErlangen), Germany.
Prof Andrea Santangelo, Eberhard Universität Tübingen (UTübingen), Germany.
Dr Philippe Goret, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Centre de Saclay (CEA/DSM/DAPNIA), France.
Dr Helene Sol, Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers (IN2P3/CNRS), France.
Prof Luke O'Connor Drury, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), Ireland.
Prof Ladislav Rob, Institut of Particle and Nuclear Physics, Charles University (IPNP), Czech.
Prof Ocker Cornelis de Jager, North-West University (NWU), South Africa.
Prof Michal Ostrowski, Jagiellonian University (JU), Poland.
Dr Rudak Bronislaw, Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center Polish Academy of Sciences (NCAC), Poland.
Dr Ashot Akhperjanian, Yerevan Physics Institute (YerPhI), Armenia
http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.c...na=na-070307-2
Descartes Prize for Science Research
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