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English Logo - Department of Physics - TU Dortmund
Studierende sitzt am Arbeitsplatz und schaut auf den Laptop. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund
Ruhr Innovation Lab

Teams from Bochum and Dortmund are helping to build the largest gamma-ray observatory

© Maximilian Linhoff
Currently, LST and MAGIC telescopes are in operation at the observatory on La Palma.
The green light has been given for an ambitious project in cutting-edge astronomical research: By 2031, a new gamma-ray observatory will be established, with one site in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere. A German consortium comprising two Max Planck Institutes, a Helmholtz Center, and seven German universities—including the partners of the Ruhr Innovation Lab, Ruhr University Bochum and TU Dortmund University—is playing a key role in this project. Gamma rays will be used to study sources of cosmic radiation, dark matter, and other extreme cosmic phenomena. The Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) will provide the consortium with a total of 4.1 million euros in funding over the next three years.

Gamma rays are of particular interest for the study of the universe: They are produced by high-energy cosmic processes, such as the explosion of massive stars or in jets from active galaxies. When gamma rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere, they produce blue flashes of light that last only tiny fractions of a second; although these are invisible to the human eye, they can be detected by special sensors.

For this very purpose, a total of 64 mirror telescopes will be erected over the next five years in Chile’s Atacama Desert and on the Canary Island of La Palma. Together, they will form the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory, or CTAO for short. It will be the world’s largest and most powerful observatory for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy—ten times more sensitive than previous detectors.

German Consortium Plays a Key Role in CTAO

A German consortium will play a leading role in driving the construction and commissioning of the CTAO telescopes. To this end, the BMFTR is providing over four million euros over the next three years as part of the “Exploration of the Universe and Matter” program. The consortium includes the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Humboldt University of Berlin, the Technical University of Dortmund, and the universities of Bochum, Potsdam, Tübingen, and Würzburg. Also involved are the Max Planck Institutes for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and for Physics in Garching near Munich, as well as the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Zeuthen, which is part of the Helmholtz Association. “The project partners play a crucial role in many aspects of CTAO: They test components, develop software for detection and data analysis, and support the commissioning of the first telescopes,” explains consortium spokesperson Prof. Dr. Stefan Funk from the Erlangen Center for Astroparticle Physics.

Researchers from Würzburg, Bochum, and Dortmund are putting the telescopes into operation

The CTAO’s telescopes have a mirror diameter of 23 meters. In addition to commissioning the telescopes, researchers from Bochum, Dortmund, and Würzburg will also develop and install a system to monitor the vibrational behavior of these telescopes in order to detect potential damage to the chassis or the supporting structure at an early stage. Researchers from the Ruhr Innovation Lab will also help develop the software for the observatory.

Dr. Dominik Elsässer, a private lecturer in the Department of Physics at TU Dortmund University and head of the Dortmund subproject, explains: “The CTAO’s telescopes will provide us with a unique insight into the processes occurring, for example, in the vicinity of massive black holes at the centers of active galaxies.”

“Thanks to funding from the BMFTR, we can make optimal use of the expertise of researchers in the Ruhr region, for example in the development of innovative software solutions. From a scientific perspective, we are also particularly interested in the opportunities arising from the simultaneous operation of the CTAO with telescopes for other wavelength ranges and for neutrinos, as well as the theoretical modeling of the processes in gamma-ray sources,” said Prof. Dr. Julia Tjus, subproject leader at Ruhr University Bochum. Also involved in the Bochum subproject are the groups led by Prof. Dr. Anna Franckowiak and Dr. Elisa Püschel.

As part of the BMFTR’s collaborative research program, researchers at the Ruhr Innovation Lab will receive a total of 910,000 euros over the next three years, giving them the opportunity to significantly shape the field of multimessenger astronomy.

Close Collaboration in the Ruhr Region

The groups at Ruhr University Bochum and TU Dortmund University work closely together within the framework of the Ruhr Innovation Lab and the DFG Collaborative Research Center 1491, addressing a broad range of questions in astrophysics, astroparticle physics, particle physics, and plasma astrophysics.

Once completed, the CTAO will play a leading role in exploring the universe using various information carriers. Researchers from the Ruhr University Alliance—namely Ruhr University Bochum, the Technical University of Dortmund, and the University of Duisburg-Essen—are also involved in other major international astrophysics projects: the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole, the planned Einstein Telescope gravitational-wave detector, and projects working toward the future SKAO radio observatory.

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