<p>The telescopes in your picture <em>are</em> optical telescopes. They are used to detect cosmic rays using the   <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cherenkov radiation</a> caused by charged particles moving faster than the speed of light (in air) in the atmosphere. These are normally secondary particles that have been produced in collisions between cosmic rays and nuclei in the upper atmosphere.</p>

<p>Radiation produced by particles moving at close to light speed is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_beaming" rel="nofollow noreferrer">beamed</a> in the direction of motion. An array of optical telescopes picks up the beam, and the orientation of the image is a projection of the original track of the particle. By combining images taken with telescopes covering a wide area, and taken at almost the same time, one can reconstruct the paths of the secondary particles to work out which direction the original cosmic ray came from. The intensity of the images tells you something about the original energy of the cosmic ray.</p>

<p>Possibly this is the answer to your question - a <em>single</em> optical telescope might detect the Cherenkov radiation from a single secondary particle, but it would be difficult to reconstruct the path or energy of the original cosmic ray on its own - at least a pair of telescopes, or better still, a network is preferable. The properties of these "cosmic ray" telescopes are also quite different from "ordinary" astronomical telescopes. Cosmic ray telescopes need as much collecting area as possible, because the Cherenkov radiation is faint - but they can do this at the expense of image quality. They use very wide angle cameras (5 degrees or more) and use huge faceted/sgemented mirrors that give massive collecting area, but image quality (maybe 3 arminutes full width half maximum for a point source) that would be completely unacceptable for conventional optical light astronomy.</p>

<p>Or (thanks Conrad Turner) you are asking why we cannot use the mirrors of an optical telescope to focus the cosmic rays onto a detector and image their source? The reason for that is simply that cosmic rays are not reflected from glass/silvered surfaces in the same way that light is. They are extremely energetic particles that either pass straight through the mirrors or are absorbed within them. i.e. They do not reflect or refract in the same way as light.</p>

<p>In other circumstances, cosmic rays are a nuisance when conducting observations with optical telescopes. They are a source of background noise in CCD detetor images. Cosmic rays (or the secondary particles) are capable of liberating electrons in the silicon and therefore simulating small intense light sources in the sky. Often these are seen as small bright pixels, groups of pixels or trails on the CCD image, confusing what you were originally trying to look at. However, these cosmic rays are not focused by the telescope, they are essentially being picked up by the detector itself and would have been so if the detector was not even attached to a telescope at all. They are nearly impossible to shield against because they have very high energies and your detector needs to have a hole to let the optical light in!</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-20T16:20:58.013Z
Great answer! A tiny comment: energy and direction reconstructions is in fact also possible with only one telescope. To reconstruct the direction one can exploit slight asymmetries of the shower ellipse. MAGIC was used in mono mode before the second telescope was build and also H.E.S.S. can operate the big central telescope alone.
samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-08-17T07:46:59.283Z
Do Cherenkov photons include a large portion of optical photons(longer than 3000A) ?
questionhang
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-30T17:03:07.037Z
Since HESS, CTA and VERITAS collect blue light, why can not we use optical telescopes to collect blue light and study cosmic rays directly? Why do we build different kinds of telescopes?
questionhang
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-30T17:20:13.040Z
I'm not clear what you mean. Cosmic rays are not "blue light", they are relativistic particles. The way you detect them is from light that is produced when they pass through the atmosphere. HESS/VERITAS etc. *are* optical telescopes that collect blue light and study cosmic rays.
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-30T17:30:29.653Z
@Rob Jeffries: I think he is asking something like: Why can't we image a cosmic ray?
Conrad Turner
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-30T17:31:14.973Z
@ConradTurner Got it!
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-30T21:32:44.167Z
@ I mean optical telescopes could collect blue light two. Why do we build a different kind of telescope? We can use optical telescopes directly.
questionhang
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-30T22:31:17.597Z
@questionhang Optical telescopes for conventional astronomical observing with sub-arcsecond angular resolution are difficult and very expensive to make. The largest ones in the world presently are about 11-m in diameter, relatively small in the cosmic ray arena. Cherenkov telescopes have much cruder imaging and can be put together more cheaply, with larger, tesselated mirrors and can be enormous in comparison. You don't ask Leonardo da Vinci to whitewash your house...
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-01T03:10:36.257Z
@so optical telescopes do receive the signal of cosmic rays, I mean blue light,  when they observe other targets?
questionhang
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-01T08:41:18.570Z
@questionhang If taking images in the blue part of the spectrum then yes, I guess they will. I really hadn't thought about it before. But the signal from a single telescope is useless for reconstructing where the original cosmic ray came from.
ProfRob
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-02T03:53:58.457Z
@Rob so it should happen that occasionally the background of ccd images taken by an optical telescope may become bright suddenly?  The detector of VERITAS, CTA and HESS are CCDs?
questionhang
CC BY-SA 4.0
2015-01-30T13:12:03.270Z
2019-08-20T16:34:08.987Z
2019-08-20T16:34:08.987Z
ProfRob
<blockquote>
  <p>Preface: cosmic rays are technically not the main interests for Cherenkov telescopes, they usually focus on very high energy gamma rays and showers from cosmic rays (mainly protons) are considered background in most measurements. </p>
</blockquote>

<p>In addition to the very goods points raised in @RobJeffries answer, there are some more reasons why telescopes build for optical astronomy are not commonly used to observe Cherenkov light</p>

<ul>
<li><p><strong>Sensitivity and speed of camera and electronics</strong> The flashes of Cherenkov light caused by air showers are very faint and short. Their duration is in the order of a few nanoseconds and have only about 100 photons per square meter (exact number depends on energy, type of shower, direction and altitude). To take images of these showers, Cherenkov telescopes use special cameras build of photomultiplier tubes which are both sensitive enough to detect such faint light and fast enough to take images with only about 10 ns integration time. If the integration time would be longer, the noise from the night sky background would hide the image of the shower. Telescopes build for optical astronomy typically use CCD cameras with long integration times in comparison. For example Griffin et al. (2011) state integration times on the scale of seconds or longer (<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6535" rel="noreferrer">https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6535</a>). These cameras would not be suitable to make shower images.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Availability</strong> The big telescopes for optical astronomy are typically oversubscribed by a factor of 4 (see e.g. <a href="https://www.eso.org/public/blog/how-productive-is-the-vlt/" rel="noreferrer">https://www.eso.org/public/blog/how-productive-is-the-vlt/</a>). I don't know the exact numbers for all Cherenkov telescopes, but at least for one of them, the oversubscription lower, somewhere in the order of 3, so using an optical telescope seem unnecessary difficult if observation time with a Cherenkov telescope is easier to get. In fact there are studies to do it the other way round and use Cherenkov telescopes for optical astronomy also because of the huge oversubscription of optical telescopes, see e.g. Griffin et al. (2011, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6535" rel="noreferrer">https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6535</a>)</p></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-22T07:13:14.377Z
Optical mirrors are capable of collecting Cherenkov photons, right? The reason a Cherenkov telescope is built like a radio dish instead of an optical telescope is an optical telescope is more expensive, right?
questionhang
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-22T08:06:23.597Z
@questionhang It depends a bit on the wavelengths the mirrors are build for. Some optical telescopes are optimised for red and infrared light, the reflectivity might already be too bad in the blue range. But in theory, yes, optical mirrors can collect at least part of the spectrum of Cherenkov light. Another point about how they are build might be the time for repointing the telescope. I don't know how fast optical telescopes are, but Cherenkov telescopes need to be pretty fast. For example to observe GRBs they need to reposition within seconds.
samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-22T09:29:16.370Z
Another point worth investigating might be the shape of mirrors. Do mirrors of telescopes for optical astronomy allow isochronous imaging?
samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-23T10:50:29.053Z
VLT can have interferometric observations. ( https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/technology/interferometry/)
questionhang
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-08-20T16:17:01.300Z
2019-08-20T16:17:01.300Z
samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
<p>HESS, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_Telescope_Array" rel="nofollow noreferrer">CTA</a>, and VERITAS are used to study cosmic rays. <br/>
 <img src="https://i.sstatic.net/shFLa.jpg" alt="veritas">
What they receive are optical (maybe very blue) photons.<br/>
So my question is: Why don't we use optical telescopes to study cosmic rays directly?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-01-30T12:33:03.433Z
Why do you think they are not optical telescopes?
Py-ser
<cosmic-ray>
Why do we not use optical telescopes to study cosmic rays directly?
questionhang
# Why do we not use optical telescopes to study cosmic rays directly?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-01-30)

HESS, [CTA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_Telescope_Array), and VERITAS are used to study cosmic rays.   
![veritas](https://i.sstatic.net/shFLa.jpg)
What they receive are optical (maybe very blue) photons.  
So my question is: Why don't we use optical telescopes to study cosmic rays directly?

**Tags:** cosmic-ray

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Why do you think they are not optical telescopes?  

---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2015-01-30. Score: 9

The telescopes in your picture *are* optical telescopes. They are used to detect cosmic rays using the [Cherenkov radiation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation) caused by charged particles moving faster than the speed of light (in air) in the atmosphere. These are normally secondary particles that have been produced in collisions between cosmic rays and nuclei in the upper atmosphere.

Radiation produced by particles moving at close to light speed is [beamed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_beaming) in the direction of motion. An array of optical telescopes picks up the beam, and the orientation of the image is a projection of the original track of the particle. By combining images taken with telescopes covering a wide area, and taken at almost the same time, one can reconstruct the paths of the secondary particles to work out which direction the original cosmic ray came from. The intensity of the images tells you something about the original energy of the cosmic ray.

Possibly this is the answer to your question - a *single* optical telescope might detect the Cherenkov radiation from a single secondary particle, but it would be difficult to reconstruct the path or energy of the original cosmic ray on its own - at least a pair of telescopes, or better still, a network is preferable. The properties of these "cosmic ray" telescopes are also quite different from "ordinary" astronomical telescopes. Cosmic ray telescopes need as much collecting area as possible, because the Cherenkov radiation is faint - but they can do this at the expense of image quality. They use very wide angle cameras (5 degrees or more) and use huge faceted/sgemented mirrors that give massive collecting area, but image quality (maybe 3 arminutes full width half maximum for a point source) that would be completely unacceptable for conventional optical light astronomy.

Or (thanks username_4 username_4) you are asking why we cannot use the mirrors of an optical telescope to focus the cosmic rays onto a detector and image their source? The reason for that is simply that cosmic rays are not reflected from glass/silvered surfaces in the same way that light is. They are extremely energetic particles that either pass straight through the mirrors or are absorbed within them. i.e. They do not reflect or refract in the same way as light.

In other circumstances, cosmic rays are a nuisance when conducting observations with optical telescopes. They are a source of background noise in CCD detetor images. Cosmic rays (or the secondary particles) are capable of liberating electrons in the silicon and therefore simulating small intense light sources in the sky. Often these are seen as small bright pixels, groups of pixels or trails on the CCD image, confusing what you were originally trying to look at. However, these cosmic rays are not focused by the telescope, they are essentially being picked up by the detector itself and would have been so if the detector was not even attached to a telescope at all. They are nearly impossible to shield against because they have very high energies and your detector needs to have a hole to let the optical light in!

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Since HESS, CTA and VERITAS collect blue light, why can not we use optical telescopes to collect blue light and study cosmic rays directly? Why do we build different kinds of telescopes?  
> **username_2**: I'm not clear what you mean. Cosmic rays are not "blue light", they are relativistic particles. The way you detect them is from light that is produced when they pass through the atmosphere. HESS/VERITAS etc. *are* optical telescopes that collect blue light and study cosmic rays.  
> **username_4**: @Rob Jeffries: I think he is asking something like: Why can't we image a cosmic ray?  
> **username_2**: @username_4 Got it!  
> **username_0**: @ I mean optical telescopes could collect blue light two. Why do we build a different kind of telescope? We can use optical telescopes directly.  
> **username_2**: @username_0 Optical telescopes for conventional astronomical observing with sub-arcsecond angular resolution are difficult and very expensive to make. The largest ones in the world presently are about 11-m in diameter, relatively small in the cosmic ray arena. Cherenkov telescopes have much cruder imaging and can be put together more cheaply, with larger, tesselated mirrors and can be enormous in comparison. You don't ask Leonardo da Vinci to whitewash your house...  
> **username_0**: @so optical telescopes do receive the signal of cosmic rays, I mean blue light,  when they observe other targets?  
> **username_2**: @username_0 If taking images in the blue part of the spectrum then yes, I guess they will. I really hadn't thought about it before. But the signal from a single telescope is useless for reconstructing where the original cosmic ray came from.  
> **username_0**: @Rob so it should happen that occasionally the background of ccd images taken by an optical telescope may become bright suddenly?  The detector of VERITAS, CTA and HESS are CCDs?  
> **username_3**: Great answer! A tiny comment: energy and direction reconstructions is in fact also possible with only one telescope. To reconstruct the direction one can exploit slight asymmetries of the shower ellipse. MAGIC was used in mono mode before the second telescope was build and also H.E.S.S. can operate the big central telescope alone.  
> **username_0**: Do Cherenkov photons include a large portion of optical photons(longer than 3000A) ?  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2019-08-20. Score: 6

> Preface: cosmic rays are technically not the main interests for Cherenkov telescopes, they usually focus on very high energy gamma rays and showers from cosmic rays (mainly protons) are considered background in most measurements.

In addition to the very goods points raised in @RobJeffries answer, there are some more reasons why telescopes build for optical astronomy are not commonly used to observe Cherenkov light

* **Sensitivity and speed of camera and electronics** The flashes of Cherenkov light caused by air showers are very faint and short. Their duration is in the order of a few nanoseconds and have only about 100 photons per square meter (exact number depends on energy, type of shower, direction and altitude). To take images of these showers, Cherenkov telescopes use special cameras build of photomultiplier tubes which are both sensitive enough to detect such faint light and fast enough to take images with only about 10 ns integration time. If the integration time would be longer, the noise from the night sky background would hide the image of the shower. Telescopes build for optical astronomy typically use CCD cameras with long integration times in comparison. For example Griffin et al. (2011) state integration times on the scale of seconds or longer (<https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6535>). These cameras would not be suitable to make shower images.
* **Availability** The big telescopes for optical astronomy are typically oversubscribed by a factor of 4 (see e.g. <https://www.eso.org/public/blog/how-productive-is-the-vlt/>). I don't know the exact numbers for all Cherenkov telescopes, but at least for one of them, the oversubscription lower, somewhere in the order of 3, so using an optical telescope seem unnecessary difficult if observation time with a Cherenkov telescope is easier to get. In fact there are studies to do it the other way round and use Cherenkov telescopes for optical astronomy also because of the huge oversubscription of optical telescopes, see e.g. Griffin et al. (2011, <https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6535>)

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Optical mirrors are capable of collecting Cherenkov photons, right? The reason a Cherenkov telescope is built like a radio dish instead of an optical telescope is an optical telescope is more expensive, right?  
> **username_3**: @username_0 It depends a bit on the wavelengths the mirrors are build for. Some optical telescopes are optimised for red and infrared light, the reflectivity might already be too bad in the blue range. But in theory, yes, optical mirrors can collect at least part of the spectrum of Cherenkov light. Another point about how they are build might be the time for repointing the telescope. I don't know how fast optical telescopes are, but Cherenkov telescopes need to be pretty fast. For example to observe GRBs they need to reposition within seconds.  
> **username_3**: Another point worth investigating might be the shape of mirrors. Do mirrors of telescopes for optical astronomy allow isochronous imaging?  
> **username_0**: VLT can have interferometric observations. ( https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/technology/interferometry/)  

---

