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• The VERITAS Cherenkov Telescopes

The VERITAS Cherenkov Telescopes

The VERITAS collaboration is presently operating the VERITAS/Whipple 10 m Cherenkov telescope on Mt. Hopkins (Az). With an analysis energy threshold of 300 GeV, the Whipple 10m detects the Crab Nebula (~3E-11 erg cm-2 s-1 @ 1 TeV) in 10 minutes. The energy of individual GeV/TeV photons can be reconstructed with an accuracy of 25%. The location of sources can be estimated with a precision of better than 1 arcmin.

The collaboration has finalized the construction of the VERITAS Cherenkov Telescope Array. It consists of four Cherenkov telescopes, each of the 12 m diameter class. The system improves the sensitivity by one order of magnitude over the Whipple 10m.