MAGIC

Home page of the Experiment: http://hegra1.mppmu.mpg.de/

The MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cerenkov telescope) is one of the new generation imaging Cerenkov telescopes which will be operative at low energy threshold in the next future.

The other next generation experiments are Hess, Veritas, Cangaroo, but, according to time schedules, Magic will be the first to be operative.

The aim is to lower the energy threshold by at least one order of magnitude with respect to the present ground-based telescopes. This together with the increased upper energy threshold of satellites (Agile, Glast) will close the observative gap between 1-10 GeV and 300 GeV existing at present.

This energy interval, completely unexplored up to now, must play a fundamental role in the understanding of many physical and astrophysical phenomena like:

1. the nature of the unidentified EGRET sources which are a substantial part of the EGRET Catalogue;
2. the nature and origin of the diffuse Galactic and extra-Galactic gamma background (this is important not only in relation to the previous point and in general for the physics of point sources, but also will help to understand the origin of cosmic rays);
3. the determination of the cut-off energy in pulsars and the relative model of magnetosphere;
4. the exploration of distant (high red-shift) AGN due to the transparency of the universe to low energy gamma photons;
5. the existence of a dark matter annihilation line from the Galaxy;
6. the nature of a vast class of galactic objects like Black Hole Candidates, X-Ray binaries , microquasars, O-B associations, cataclismic variables, all characterised by high-energy and rapidly varying phenomena whose properties at VHE energies are still unknown.

Moreover the MAGIC telescope was designed to point a source in a very short (20-30 sec.) time and an alarm facility for signals from GRB will be operative giving the possibility of catching a GRB in the VHE energy range in favourable conditions.