FOUNDATION STONE LAYING CEREMONY FOR THE CTA- NORTH TELESCOPE

The construction of the Large Size Telescope (LST) prototype, one of the hyper-technological eyes of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) North, has officially started. Takaaki Kajita, who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, attended the opening ceremony on 9 October, on the island of La Palma (Canary Islands). The CTA-North is one of the two structures that will make up the biggest gamma ray observatory ever built. The CTA-North will be built at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) at an altitude of 2,200 metres above sea level, on the island of La Palma in the Spanish Canary Islands. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Paranal, Chile has been chosen as the site for constructing the CTA-South, in the southern hemisphere. The project involves the construction of over 100 new-generation telescopes to study high and very high-energy photons from galactic and extra-galactic sources. Italy is involved in the CTA project through the Italian Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), the INFN and a consortium of universities led by the University of Padua.