High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) is a system of imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) for the investigation of cosmic

gamma ray A gamma ray, also known as gamma radiation (symbol γ or \gamma), is a penetrating form of electromagnetic radiation arising from the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. It consists of the shortest wavelength electromagnetic waves, typically ...

s in the

photon energy Photon energy is the energy carried by a single photon. The amount of energy is directly proportional to the photon's electromagnetic frequency and thus, equivalently, is inversely proportional to the wavelength. The higher the photon's frequency, ...

range of 0.03 to 100 TeV. The

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

was chosen in honour of

Victor Hess Victor Franz Hess (; 24 June 188317 December 1964) was an Austrian-American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics, who discovered cosmic rays. Biography He was born to Vinzenz Hess and Serafine Edle von Grossbauer-Waldstätt, in Waldstein ...

, who was the first to observe

cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...

s. The name also emphasizes two main features of the installation, namely the simultaneous observation of air showers with several telescopes, under different viewing angles, and the combination of telescopes to a large system to increase the effective detection area for gamma rays. H.E.S.S. permits the exploration of gamma-ray sources with intensities at a level of a few thousandth parts of the flux of the

Crab Nebula The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1842 u ...

. H.E.S.S. consists of five telescopes: four with mirrors just under 12 m in diameter, arranged as a square with 120 m sides, and one larger telescope with a 28 m mirror, located at the centre of the array. The four 12 m telescopes began operation in 2004, with the 28 m telescope added as an upgrade (called H.E.S.S. II) in 2012. As with other gamma-ray telescopes, H.E.S.S. observes high energy processes in the universe. Gamma-ray producing sources include

supernova remnant A supernova remnant (SNR) is the structure resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova. The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion, and the interstellar mat ...

active galactic nuclei An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that has a much-higher-than-normal luminosity over at least some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with characteristics indicating that the luminosity is not prod ...

and pulsar wind nebulae. It also actively tests unproven theories in physics such as looking for the predicted gamma-ray annihilation signal from WIMP dark matter particles and testing

Lorentz invariance In a relativistic theory of physics, a Lorentz scalar is an expression, formed from items of the theory, which evaluates to a scalar, invariant under any Lorentz transformation In physics, the Lorentz transformations are a six-parameter famil ...

predictions of

loop quantum gravity Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is a theory of quantum gravity, which aims to merge quantum mechanics and general relativity, incorporating matter of the Standard Model into the framework established for the pure quantum gravity case. It is an attem ...

. H.E.S.S. is located on the Cranz family farm, Göllschau, in

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

, near the Gamsberg, an area well known for its excellent optical quality. The first of the four telescopes of Phase I of the H.E.S.S. project went into operation in Summer 2002; all four were operational in December 2003. In 2004 H.E.S.S. was the first IACT experiment to spatially resolve a source of cosmic

s. In 2005, it was announced that H.E.S.S. had detected eight new high-energy gamma ray sources, doubling the known number of such sources. As of 2014, more than 90 sources of Tera-Electronvolt gamma-rays were discovered by H.E.S.S. In 2016, the HESS collaboration reported deep gamma ray observations which show the presence of petaelectronvolt protons originating from the supermassive black hole at central of Milky Way, and therefore should be considered as a viable alternative to supernova remnants as a source of petaelectronvolt Galactic cosmic rays.

References

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External links

High Energy Stereoscopic System Project (H.E.S.S.)
on the internet

* ttp://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5717/1938 ''Science'': A new population of very high energy gamma-ray sources in the Milky Waybr>''New Scientist'': Number of very high-energy gamma ray sources doublesAspera European network portalHESS experiment
record on

INSPIRE-HEP INSPIRE-HEP is an open access digital library for the field of high energy physics (HEP). It is the successor of the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) database, the main literature database for high energy physics since the 19 ...

Gamma-ray telescopes Astronomical observatories in Namibia Particle experiments

See also

References

External links