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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

In October 2016, the ASTRI telescope prototype, (Image 1) a novel, dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder telescope design proposed for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) [phys.org], passed its biggest test yet by demonstrating a constant point-spread function of a few arc minutes over a large field of view of 10 degrees.

Three classes of telescope types are required to cover the full CTA very-high energy range (20 GeV to 300 TeV): Medium-size telescopes will cover CTA's core energy range (100 GeV to 10 TeV) while the large-size telescopes and small-size telescopes (SSTs) will extend the energy range below 100 GeV and above a few TeV, respectively.

The ASTRI telescope is one of three proposed SST designs being prototyped and tested for CTA's southern hemisphere array. The ASTRI telescope uses an innovative dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder configuration with a 4.3 m diameter primary mirror and a 1.8 m monolithic secondary mirror. In 1905, the German physicist and astronomer Karl Schwarzschild proposed a design for a two-mirror telescope intended to eliminate much of the optical aberration across the field of view. This idea, elaborated in 1926 by André Couder, lay dormant for almost a century because it was considered too difficult and expensive to build. In 2007, a study by Vladimir Vassiliev and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) demonstrated the design's usefulness for atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes.

The design is meant to correct optical aberration.

Original Submission