Scientific Highlights

LST-1 Discovers the Most Distant AGN at Very High Energies

January 9, 2024

The LST Collaboration reported the detection of OP 313 at very high energies with the LST-1, marking the telescope's first scientific discovery and making OP 313 the most distant Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) ever detected by a Cherenkov telescope.

The MAGIC Telescopes scrutinize the center of the Milky Way for fingerprints of dark matter

February 10, 2023

233 hours of observations of the galactic center with the MAGIC Telescope has helped constrain possible properties of dark matter particle candidates. The results are published in Physical Review Letters. Daniel Kerszberg, Ramon y Cajal fellow at IFAE, Barcelona, Spain, is one of the leading authors of this research.

The MAGIC telescopes detect vampire star nuclear explosion

April 14, 2022

Researchers from the MAGIC collaboration, have detected very high-energy gamma rays from a recurrent nova in the Milky Way. The results of these observations and the new discoveries about these stellar explosions have been published on April 14 in an article in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Cosmic Cataclysm allows precise test of General Relativity

July 9, 2020

The detection of a gamma ray burst by the MAGIC telescopes allows to study whether the speed of light in vacuum is a constant of nature. The results, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, show that photons of different energies emitted about 4.5 billion years ago reach Earth with a time difference of less than one minute, thus putting a limit on the hypothesis that the velocity of photons depends on their energy.

CTA Prototype LST-1 Detects Very High-Energy Emission from the Crab Pulsar

June 22, 2020

The first prototype of the Large Size Telescope (LST) of the Cherenkov Telescope Network (CTA), the LST-1, has detected the Crab Pulsar, the neutron star at the centre of the Crab Nebula. This observation certifies the proper functioning of this telescope, which is currently in the commissioning phase.

Breaking the limits: Discovery of the highest-energy photons from a gamma-ray burst

November 19, 2019

The first GRB detected by the MAGIC telescopes, known as GRB 190114C, reveals for the first time the highest energy photons measured from these objects.

Final Agreements Signed for CTA's Southern Hemisphere Site in Chile

December 20, 2018

On 19 December 2018, the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) signed the final agreements needed for CTA’s southern hemisphere array to be hosted near ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

EU Particle Physics & Astronomy commit to the Research Data Revolution making the European Open Science Cloud a reality

December 3, 2018

The European project ESCAPE, funded with 16 million euros, will provide open data from astrophysics and particle physics large facilities, such as the LHC or the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA)

Cosmic fireworks from a new gamma-ray binary

November 13, 2018

A joint observational campaign with the MAGIC telescopes and the VERITAS array , has detected a new source emitting very-high-energy gamma rays from an unusual system consisting of a massive star and a pulsar