The ground-based imaging atmospheric Cherenkov technique is currently the most powerful observation method for very high energy gamma rays. With its specially designed camera and readout system, the MAGIC Telescope is capable of observing also during nights with a comparatively high level of night-sky background light. This allows to extend the MAGIC duty cycle by 30% compared to dark-night observations without moon. Here we investigate the impact of increased background light on single-pixel level and show the performance of observations in the presence of moonlight conditions to be consistent with dark night observations.
MAGIC, a system of two imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, achieves its best performance under dark conditions, i.e. in absence of moonlight or twilight. Since operating the telescopes only during dark time would severely limit the duty cycle, observations are also performed when the Moon is present in the sky. Here we present a dedicated Moon-adapted analysis and characterize the performance of MAGIC under moonlight. We evaluate energy threshold, angular resolution and sensitivity of MAGIC under different background light levels, based on Crab Nebula observations and tuned Monte Carlo s…
MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) that observe Very High Energy (VHE) gamma ray sources. The PMTs in their cameras are designed to operate under moonlight, but they are limited to Moon phases below 93% (300 Moon hours per year), as they can get damaged if the amount of light they receive is too high. As a result, they cannot be used in the three to five nights around full Moon. We have selected commercial inexpensive UV-pass filters rejecting light above a wavelength of 420 nm, where the moonlight intensity is stronger. We mounted them on light-weight fra…
MAGIC, a system of two imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes, achieves its best performance under dark conditions, i.e. in absence of moonlight or twilight. Since operating the telescopes only during dark time would severely limit the duty cycle, observations are also performed when the Moon is present in the sky. Here we develop a dedicated Moon-adapted analysis to characterize the performance of MAGIC under moonlight. We evaluate energy threshold, angular resolution and sensitivity of MAGIC under different background light levels, based on Crab Nebula observations and tuned Monte Carlo si…
The presence of moonlight is usually a limiting factor for imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes due to the high sensitivity of the camera photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). In their standard configuration, the extra noise limits the sensitivity of the experiment to gamma-ray signals and the higher PMT currents also accelerates PMT aging. Since fall 2012, observations have been carried out with VERITAS under bright moonlight (Moon illumination $> 35\%$), in two observing modes, by reducing the voltage applied to the PMTs and with UV bandpass filters, which allow observations up to $\sim80\%$ Moo…
During May 2013, a gamma-ray flare from the BL Lac object 1ES 1727+502 (z=0.055) has been detected with the VERITAS Cherenkov telescopes. This detection represents the first evidence of very-high-energy (E>100 GeV) variability from this blazar and has been achieved using a reduced-high-voltage configuration which allows observations under bright moonlight. The integral flux is about five times higher than the archival VHE flux measured by MAGIC. The detection triggered additional VERITAS observations during standard dark-time and multiwavelength observations from infrared to X-rays with the FL…
The MAGIC-I telescope is the largest single-dish Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov telescope in the world. A second telescope, MAGIC-II, will operate in coincidence with MAGIC-I in stereoscopic mode. MAGIC-II is a clone of MAGIC-I, but with a number of significant improvements, namely a highly pixelized camera with a wider trigger area, improved optical analog signal transmission and a 2-4 GSps fast readout. All the technical elements of MAGIC-II were installed by the end of 2008. The telescope is currently undergoing commissioning and integration with MAGIC-I. An update of the technical performan…
Imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) are equipped with sensitive photomultiplier tube (PMT) cameras. Exposure to high levels of background illumination degrades the efficiency of and potentially destroys these photo-detectors over time, so IACTs cannot be operated in the same configuration in the presence of bright moonlight as under dark skies. Since September 2012, observations have been carried out with the VERITAS IACTs under bright moonlight (defined as about three times the night-sky-background (NSB) of a dark extragalactic field, typically occurring when Moon illumination > …
MAGIC comprises two 17m diameter IACTs to be operated in stereo mode. Currently we are commissioning the second telescope, MAGIC II. The camera of the second telescope has been equipped with 1039 pixels of 0.1-degree diameter. Always seven pixels are grouped in a hexagonal configuration to form a cluster. This modular design allows easier control and maintenance of the camera. The pixel sensors are high quantum efficiency photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) from Hamamatsu (superbialkali type, QE ~ 32% at the peak wavelength) that we operate at rather low gain of 30 k. This allows us to also perform e…
The MAGIC telescopes are two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) located on the Canary island of La Palma. With 17m diameter mirror dishes and ultra-fast electronics, they provide an energy threshold as low as 50 GeV for observations at low zenith angles. The first MAGIC telescope was taken in operation in 2004 whereas the second one joined in 2009. In 2011 we started a major upgrade program to improve and to unify the stereoscopic system of the two similar but at that time different telescopes. Here we report on the upgrade of the readout electronics and digital trigger of the tw…
The second MAGIC telescope, a clone of the first 17 m diameter MAGIC telescope, has entered the final commissioning phase and will soon start to take data, preferentially in the so-called stereo-mode. The control system for both telescopes is assigned to a number of autonomous functional units called subsystems. The control hardware and software components of the second telescope subsystems have been modified with respect to their counterparts of the first telescope. A new Central Control (CC) program has been developed to communicate with all the subsystems of both telescopes and to coordinat…
Recently the readout of the MAGIC telescopes has been upgraded to a new system based on the Domino Ring Sampler version 4 chip. We present the analysis techniques and the signal extraction performance studies of this system. We study the behaviour of the baseline, the noise, the cross-talk, the linearity and the time resolution. We investigate also the optimal signal extraction. In addition we show some of the analysis techniques specific to the readout based on the Domino Ring Sampler version 2 chip, previously used in the MAGIC II telescope.
The MAGIC telescopes are an array of two imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) studying the gamma ray sky at very high-energies (VHE; E>100 GeV). The observations are performed in stereoscopic mode, with both telescopes pointing at the same position in the sky. The MAGIC field of view (FoV) acceptance for hadrons and gamma rays has a complex shape, which depends on several parameters such as the azimuth and zenith angle of the observations. In the standard MAGIC analysis, the strategy adopted for estimating this acceptance is not optimal in the case of complex FoVs. In this contribu…
The MAGIC experiment was upgraded to a two-telescope system in 2009. Unlike other Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescope arrays, MAGIC has operated for five years exclusively in monoscopic mode, and the single telescope analysis was optimized throughout this time. To improve the analysis, we used techniques like the random forest event classification method for different purposes, and sophisticated image cleaning algorithms. The monoscopic performance was optimized in the energy domain around and below 100 GeV, which is inaccessible for the other arrays of Cherenkov telescopes. Still, with these anal…
MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain. During summer 2011 and 2012 it underwent a major upgrade. The main subsystems upgraded were the MAGIC-I camera and its trigger system and the readout system of both telescopes. We use observations of the Crab Nebula taken at low and medium zenith angles to assess the key performance parameters of the MAGIC stereo system. For low zenith angle observations, the standard trigger threshold of the MAGIC telescopes is about 50 GeV. The integral sensitivity for point-like sources with Cr…
The mirrors installed on Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes like the MAGIC telescopes in La Palma, Canary Islands, are constantly exposed to the harsh environment. They have to withstand wind-induced corrosion from dust and sand, changing temperatures, and rain. Because of the size of the telescope, protecting the structure with a dome is not practical. The current mirrors used in MAGIC are aluminum front-coated glass mirrors, covered by a thin quartz layer. But even with this protective layer, significant decrease in reflectivity can be seen on timescales of several years. The quartz la…
MAGIC is a stereoscopic system of two 17m diameter Imaging Air Cherenckov Telescopes (IACTs) for $γ$-ray astronomy. Lowering the energy threshold of IACTs is crucial for the observation of Pulsars, high redshift AGNs and GRBs. A lower threshold compared to conventional digital trigger can be achieved by means of a novel concept, the so called Sum-Trigger, based on the analogue sum of a patch of pixels. The Sum-Trigger principle has been proven experimentally in 2007 by decreasing the energy threshold of the first MAGIC telescope from 55GeV down to 25GeV. The first VHE detection of the Crab Pul…
The MAGIC telescopes are one of the three major IACTs (Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes) for observation of gamma rays in the TeV regime currently operative. MAGIC functions since 2003, and has published data from more than 60 sources, mostly blazars. MAGIC already provides astronomical \texttt{.fits} files with basic final scientific products such as spectral energy distributions, light curves and skymaps from published results. In future, the format of the files can be complemented with further relevant information to the community: a) by including the full multi-wavelength dataset e…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) will be the next generation gamma-ray observatory, which will consist of three kinds of telescopes of different sizes. Among those, the Large Size Telescope (LST) will be the most sensitive in the low energy range starting from 20 GeV. The prototype LST (LST-1) proposed for CTA was inaugurated in October 2018 in the northern hemisphere site, La Palma (Spain), and is currently in its commissioning phase. MAGIC is a system of two gamma-ray Cherenkov telescopes of the current generation, located approximately 100 m away from LST-1, that have been operating in s…
The Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope MAGIC I has recently been extended to a stereoscopic system by adding a second 17 m telescope, MAGIC-II. One of the major improvements of the second telescope is an improved camera. The Camera Control Program is embedded in the telescope control software as an independent subsystem. The Camera Control Program is an effective software to monitor and control the camera values and their settings and is written in the visual programming language LabVIEW. The two main parts, the Central Variables File, which stores all information of the pixel and other c…
The Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescope system consists of two imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) and is located on the Canary island of La Palma. IACTs are excellent tools to inspect the very-high-energy (few tens of GeV and above) gamma-ray sky by capturing images of the air showers, originated by the absorption of gamma rays and cosmic rays by the atmosphere, through the detection of Cherenkov photons emitted in the shower. One of the main factors determining the sensitivity of IACTs to gamma-ray sources, in general, is how well reconstructed the proper…
Night Sky Background (NSB) is a complex phenomenon, consisting of all light detected by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) not attributable to Cherenkov light emission. Understanding the effect of NSB on cameras for the next-generation Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is important, as it affects the systematic errors on observations, the energy threshold, the thermal control of the cameras and the ability of the telescopes to operate under partial moonlight conditions. This capacity to observe under partial moonlight conditions is crucial for the CTA transient science programme, a…
MAGIC is a system of two imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) located on the Canary island of La Palma. Each telescope's imaging camera consists of 1039 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). We developed three detector modules based on silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) of seven pixels each that are mechanically and electronically compatible with those used in the MAGIC camera. These prototype modules are installed next to the PMTs in the imaging camera and are operated in parallel. To achieve a similar active area per pixel we used seven to nine SiPMs for producing a composite pixel. The Si…
The monitoring of the atmosphere is very relevant for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. Adverse weather conditions (strong wind, high humidity, etc.) may damage the telescopes and must therefore be monitored continuously to guarantee a safe operation, and the presence of clouds and aerosols affects the transmission of the Cherenkov light and consequently the performance of the telescopes. The ATmospheric CAlibration (ATCA) technical working group of the MAGIC collaboration aims to cover all aspects related to atmosphere monitoring and calibration. In this paper we give an overview of t…
MAGIC-I is currently the Imaging Cherenkov Telescope with the worldwide largest reflector currently in operation. The initially achieved low trigger threshold of 60 GeV has been further reduced by means of a novel trigger that allows the telescope to record gamma ray showers down to 25 GeV. The high trigger rate combined with the 2 GHz signal sampling rate results in large data volumes that can reach 1 TByte per night for MAGIC-I and even more with the second MAGIC telescope coming soon into operation. To deal with the large storage requirements of MAGIC-I and MAGIC-II, we have installed the d…
In 2007 a prototype of a new analog Sum-Trigger was installed in the MAGIC I telescope, which lowered the trigger threshold from 55 GeV to 25 GeV and led to the detection of pulsed gamma radiation from the Crab pulsar. To eliminate the need for manual tuning and maintenance demanded by that first prototype, a new setup with fully automatic calibration was designed recently. The key element of the new circuit is a novel, continuously variable analog delay line that enables the temporal equalization of the signals from the camera photo sensors, which is crucial for the efficient detection of low…
We investigate the performance of the MAGIC telescopes under three simulated atmospheric conditions: an increased aerosol content in the lower part of the troposphere, the presence of thin aerosol over-densities at different heights, and an extremely clean atmosphere. Weshow how the effective area of the telescope system is gradually reduced in the presence of varying concentrations of aerosols whereas the energy threshold rises. Clouds at different heights produce energy and altitude-dependent effects on the performance of the system.
This paper is devoted to the memory of Dr. Victor Afanasiev and his immense legacy. The report highlights the capabilities of two new instruments tested at the 1-meter Zeiss-1000 telescope of SAO RAS: the Stokes Polarimeter (StoP) and the MAGIC focal reducer. Optimized for the study of active galactic nuclei (AGN), methodically, these instruments are suitable for a wide range of small telescope tasks. The fields of view of StoP and MAGIC are 6' and 13' for direct images, respectively. The StoP device allows one to conduct photometric observations and polarimetric ones with a double Wollaston p…
The MAGIC gamma-ray observatory has recently been upgraded by a second Cherenkov telescope at a distance of 85 m from the first one. Simultaneous observation of air showers with the two MAGIC telescopes (stereoscopic mode) will improve the reconstruction of the shower axis and solve the ambiguity in the impact point occurring in single-telescope mode. Also, the stereo observation will result in a better angular resolution, energy estimation and cosmic-ray background rejection. It is expected that the sensitivity of MAGIC improves significantly over the full energy range (60 GeV - 20 TeV). Here…
In this contribution we describe the hardware, firmware and software components of the readout system of the MAGIC-II Cherenkov telescope on the Canary island La Palma. The PMT analog signals are transmitted by means of optical fibers from the MAGIC-II camera to the 80 m away counting house where they are routed to the new high bandwidth and fully programmable receiver boards (MONSTER), which convert back the signals from optical to electrical ones. Then the signals are split, one half provide the input signals for the level ONE trigger system while the other half is sent to the digitizing uni…
Imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) such as the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes endeavor to reach the lowest possible energy threshold. In doing so the trigger system is a key element. Reducing the trigger threshold is hampered by the rapid increase of accidental triggers generated by ambient light, the so-called Night Sky Background (NSB). In this paper we present a topological trigger, dubbed Topo-trigger, which rejects events on the basis of their relative orientation in the telescope cameras. We have simulated and tested the trigger selection a…
MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located at the Canary Island of La Palma, designed to observe gamma rays with energies above 50 GeV. Recently it has undergone an upgrade of the camera, digital trigger and readout systems. The upgrade has led to an improvement in the performance of the telescopes, especially in the lower energy range. We evaluate the performance of the upgraded MAGIC telescopes using Monte Carlo simulations and a large sample of Crab Nebula data. We study differential and integral sensitivity of the system, its angular resolution as well as its…
MAGIC is a stereoscopic system of two Imaging Air Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) located at La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain) and working in the field of very high energy gamma-ray astronomy. It makes use of a traditional digital trigger with an energy threshold of around 55 GeV. A novel trigger strategy, based on the analogue sum of signals from partially overlapped patches of pixels, leads to a lower threshold. In 2008, this principle was proven by the detection of the Crab Pulsar at 25 GeV by MAGIC in single telescope operation. During Winter 2013/14, a new system, based on this concept, was i…
MAGIC is a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes located in the Canary island of La Palma, Spain. During summer 2011 and 2012 it underwent a series of upgrades, involving the exchange of the MAGIC-I camera and its trigger system, as well as the upgrade of the readout system of both telescopes. We use observations of the Crab Nebula taken at low and medium zenith angles to assess the key performance parameters of the MAGIC stereo system. For low zenith angle observations, the standard trigger threshold of the MAGIC telescopes is ~50GeV. The integral sensitivity for point-like s…
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) currently in operation feature large mirrors and order of 1 ns time response to signals of a few photo-electrons produced by optical photons. This means that they are ideally suited for optical interferometry observations. Thanks to their sensitivity to visible wavelengths and long baselines optical intensity interferometry with IACTs allows reaching angular resolutions of tens to microarcsec. We have installed a simple optical setup on top of the cameras of the two 17 m diameter MAGIC IACTs and observed coherent fluctuations in the photon inten…
Context. The increase in sensitivity of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) has lead to numerous detections of extended $γ$-ray sources at TeV energies, sometimes of sizes comparable to the instrument's field of view (FoV). This creates a demand for advanced and flexible data analysis methods, able to extract source information by utilising the photon counts in the entire FoV. Aims. We present a new software package, "SkyPrism", aimed at performing 2D (3D if energy is considered) fits of IACT data, possibly containing multiple and extended sources, based on sky images binned in en…
In this contribution we describe the design of the Data AcQuisition (DAQ) and online analysis software of the MAGIC telescopes after the 2012 upgrade. Although the final stereo trigger requires coincidence between the two telescopes, the actual data acquisition is performed independently, producing two separate data streams. Events are first readout and built from the front-end electronics and then stored in the DAQs' internal ring buffer for further processing: pre-calibration and signal extraction. The pixel signals, previously used only for data quality monitoring, are now also sent "on-the…
The MAGIC I telescope produces currently around 100TByte of raw data per year that is calibrated and reduced on-site at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (La Palma). Since February 2007 most of the data have been stored and further processed in the Port d'Informacio Cientifica (PIC), Barcelona. This facility, which supports the GRID Tier 1 center for LHC in Spain, provides resources to give the entire MAGIC Collaboration access to the reduced telescope data. It is expected that the data volume will increase by a factor 3 after the start-up of the second telescope, MAGIC II. The proje…
The MAGIC two 17 meter diameter Very High Energy (VHE) gamma-ray telescopes have now operated for two years in stereoscopic mode. The performance of the instrument has been evaluated: the integral sensitivity for an energy above 300 GeV is 0.76% crab units (10% Crab units differential sensitivity below 100 GeV) and the analysis threshold energy is 50 GeV. Highlights of the last two years of observations are the measurement of the Crab Nebula spectrum from ~50 GeV to ~50 TeV; the detection of the Crab pulsar up to an energy of 400 GeV, with energy spectra measured for both P1 and P2; the discov…
The Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescope system is located on the Canary Island of La Palma and inspects the very high-energy (VHE, few tens of GeV and above) gamma-ray sky. MAGIC consists of two imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs), which capture images of the air showers originating from the absorption of gamma rays and cosmic rays by the atmosphere, through the detection of Cherenkov photons emitted in the shower. The sensitivity of IACTs to gamma-ray sources is mainly determined by the ability to reconstruct the properties (type, energy, and arrival direc…
The MAGIC telescopes, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (2200 a.s.l.) in the Canary Island of La Palma, are placed on the top of a mountain, from where a window of visibility of about 5 deg in zenith and 80 deg in azimuth is open in the direction of the surrounding ocean. This permits to search for a signature of particle showers induced by earth-skimming cosmic tau neutrinos in the PeV to EeV energy range arising from the ocean. We have studied the response of MAGIC to such events, employing Monte Carlo simulations of upward-going tau neutrino showers. The analysis of the show…
With the commissioning of the second MAGIC gamma-ray Cherenkov telescope situated close to MAGIC-I, the standard analysis package of the MAGIC collaboration, MARS, has been upgraded in order to perform the stereoscopic reconstruction of the detected atmospheric showers. MARS is a ROOT-based code written in C++, which includes all the necessary algorithms to transform the raw data recorded by the telescopes into information about the physics parameters of the observed targets. An overview of the methods for extracting the basic shower parameters is presented, together with a description of the …
The MAGIC telescopes are a system of two Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) designed to observe very high energy (VHE) gamma rays above ~50 GeV. However, as IACTs are sensitive to Cherenkov light in the UV/blue and use photo-detectors with a time response well below the ms scale, MAGIC is also able to perform simultaneous optical observations. Through an alternative system installed in the central PMT of MAGIC II camera, the so-called central pixel, MAGIC is sensitive to short (1ms - 1s) optical pulses. Periodic signals from the Crab pulsar are regularly monitored. Here we report…
The University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学）；Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie University（澳大利亚天文光学，麦考瑞大学）；Macquarie University（麦考瑞大学）；Astrophysics and Space Technologies Research Centre, Macquarie University（天体物理与空间技术中心，麦考瑞大学）；Ansys（安sys）
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation very high energy gamma-ray observatory covering the 20 GeV - 300 TeV energy range with unprecedented sensitivity, angular and energy resolution. With a site in each hemisphere, CTA will provide full-sky coverage. Four Large Size Telescopes (LSTs) in each site will be dedicated to the lowest energy range (20 GeV - 200 GeV). The first LST prototype has been installed at the CTA Northern site (Canary Island of La Palma, Spain) in October 2018 and it had been since then in commissioning phase. LST1 is located at about 100 m from MAGIC, a s…
The two MAGIC 17-m diameter Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes have been equipped to work also as an intensity interferometer with a deadtime-free, 4-channel, GPU-based, real-time correlator. Operating with baselines between approx. 40 and 90 m the MAGIC interferometer is able to measure stellar diameters of 0.5-1 mas in the 400-440 nm wavelength range with a sensitivity roughly 10 times better than that achieved in the 1970s by the Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer. Besides, active mirror control allows to split the primary mirrors into sub-mirrors. This allows to make simultane…
