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:
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.