The ASTRI Project: prototype status and future plans for a Cherenkov dual-mirror small-telescope array

Understand

ASTRI ("Astrofisica con Specchi a Tecnologia Replicante Italiana") is a flagship project of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research.

• Within this framework, INAF is currently developing a wide field of view (9.6 degrees in diameter) end-to-end prototype of the CTA small-size telescope (SST), devoted to the investigation of the energy range from a fraction of TeV up to tens of TeVs, and scheduled to start data acquisition in 2014.
• For the first time, a dual-mirror Schwarzschild-Couder optical design will be adopted on a Cherenkov telescope, in order to obtain a compact optical configuration.
• A second challenging, but innovative technical solution consists of a modular focal surface camera based on Silicon photo-multipliers with a logical pixel size of 6.2mm x 6.2mm.