MACE Telescope
Major Atmospheric Cerenkov Experiment Telescope (MACE) is an imaging atmospheric Cerenkov telescope (IACT) located near Hanle, Ladakh, India. It is the highest (in altitude) and second largest Cerenkov telescope in the world. It was built by Electronics Corporation of India, Hyderabad, for the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and was assembled at the campus of Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle.
The telescope is the second-largest gamma ray telescope in the world and will help the scientific community enhance its understanding in the fields of astrophysics, fundamental physics, and particle acceleration mechanisms.
The MACE Telescope consists of a large-area tessellated light collector of 356 m², made up of 356 mirror panels. A high-resolution imaging camera weighing about 1200 kg, for detection and characterization of the atmospheric Cherenkov events, forms the focal plane instrumentation of the telescope. The elevation over azimuth mounted telescope basket structure has two axes movement capability of ± 270° in azimuth and -26° to +165° in elevation for pointing towards any source in the sky and tracking it. The telescope, which weighs about 180 tons, is supported on six wheels which move on a 27-metre-diameter track.
The telescope has an integrated imaging camera, which contains 1088 photo multiplier-based pixels and all the signal processing and data acquisition electronics. The camera communicates the acquired data to the computer system in the control room over optical fiber.