The LST Collaboration of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will inaugurate the four large telescopes that will form part of the future CTAO-North network on October 15th, at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma. This event represents a new milestone in the construction of what will be the world's largest and most powerful gamma-ray astronomy observatory and marks the completion of the construction of the Large-Sized Telescopes (LST) planned for this site.
The four LSTs are designed to study some of the most extreme and energetic phenomena in the universe and help answer some of the major questions that astrophysics still poses. One of their main objectives is to study pulsars, neutron stars that harbor some of the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe and act as natural particle accelerators. The LSTs will help us unveil the mystery of how cosmic rays reach such high energies.
These telescopes, which detect lower-energy gamma rays through the Cherenkov light they generate upon reaching Earth's atmosphere, complete the LST sub-array of CTAO-North following the inauguration of the first telescope in 2018. In the coming years, they will be integrated with the Medium-Sized Telescopes (MST) planned for La Palma.
Spanish participation, contributing nearly a third of the funding for the LST construction, grants the country's scientific community privileged access to CTAO observation time. The Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics (IAA-CSIC) coordinates the development of the data analysis software, incorporating Artificial Intelligence techniques to improve the detection of gamma-ray signals and discriminate noise.
The collaborative work will enable the study of the origin of the most energetic particles in our galaxy. The inauguration of the four LSTs marks the end of their construction and the beginning of a commissioning and verification phase, with the aim of the LST-1 being formally accepted in 2027 for the first scientific observations.
