Description
Ondrejov Observatory is currently the residence of two of the small size Cherenkov telescopes SST-1M prototypes, which were originally developed for CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) Observatory.
SST-1M is a single-mirror Small Size Telescope prototype developed by a consortium of institutes from Poland, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. The optical layout of the telescope follows the Davies-Cotton design with the use of a single 9.42m multi-segment mirror dish composed of 18 hexagonal facets. Provided with a wide field of view of 9 degree, SST-1M is mainly designed to detect gammarays with energies in the range of 1 and 300Tev. SST-1M are equipped with DigiCam camera, which features a fully digital readout and trigger system using 250 MHz ADC, and a compact Photo-Detector Plane (PDP) composed of of 1296 pixels, each made of a hexagonal light guide coupled to silicone photomultipliers (SiPM). Several hours of observations were collected by the telescope in the mono regime so far and recently they have also demonstrated the functionality of technical solution for stereo measurements with absolute timing of triggered events.
This contribution will present an overview of the design of telescope structure, mirrors and camera and it will demonstrate the milestones achieved so far during construction and commissioning phase in Ondrejov: detection of atmospheric showers, stereoscopic observations of flasher and real shower data and preliminary estimates of detection capabilities in Ondrejov using MC simulations. The contribution will also feature some of the practical aspects of the PhD analysis during the first year study of the presenter such as gammaness cut optimization and cleaning of the measured camera images.
