MAGIC
Overview
MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov) is a system of two 17 m diameter, F/1.03 Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT), located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (ORM), in La Palma canarian island. They are dedicated to the observation of gamma rays from galactic and extragalactic sources in the very high energy range (VHE, 30 GeV to 100 TeV). The MAGIC telescopes are currently run by an international collaboration of about 165 astrophysicists from 24 institutions and consortia from 11 countries.
IPARCOS contribution
The High Energy Physics group has been a founder member of the MAGIC collaboration. Since its first light in 2003 the group has participated in the scientific exploitation of the project and the development of instrumentation for the telescopes. Presently GAE plays a leading role in this project being M. Victoria Fonseca chairwoman of the collaboration board, while Marcos López is the UCM representative in the MAGIC collaboration board
The main scientific contributions of the group have been related with the observation of pulsars and other galactic sources, the study of distant AGNs and the search of dark matter. From the technical side GAE has designed electronic units for data acquisition and is in charge of their maintenance on site. The group is also responsible of the time system and the central pixel of the telescope. In regard to software tasks, the group is responsible of the data reduction system as well as the Monte Carlo code for the telescopes simulation.