Tour of Duty in the High Desert at VERITAS

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 26th January 2023 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Hybrid

VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) is an international astrophysical collaboration between the USA, Canada, Ireland and Germany, involving 9 founding institutions and 15 collaborating institutions.  It operates a ground-based gamma-ray instrument at the Smithsonian Institution’s Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in southern Arizona USA.  This is an array of four 12 m optical reflectors that uses the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov technique to perform gamma-ray astronomy in the GeV-TeV energy range.  Very High-Energy gamma rays are associated with exotic cosmic objects such as supernovae, pulsars, quasar and black holes.  Expensive, satellite-based observatories are normally required to detect gamma rays as they are absorbed in the atmosphere, but VERITAS is able to use the Atmospheric Cherenkov Imaging technique to observe them from the ground.  VERITAS has a prodigious research output with publications in Science, Nature and Nature Astronomy.

This talk will cover the discovery and evolution of the Very High Gamma Ray astronomy technique, the associated science, VERITAS and a personal account of a recent observing visit to VERITAS.

Speaker: Dr. Paul Reynolds

Dr Paul (Josh) Reynolds is a lecturer in the Department of Physical Sciences in Munster Technological University in Cork Ireland.  He has been a member of the VERITAS collaboration since its inception in 2003 as well as being a member of it progenitor, the Whipple Observatory collaboration and a co-author of the publication which discovered the Atmospheric Cherenkov Imaging Technique in 1989.