image: The H.E.S.S. telescope system. Very high energy gamma-rays are absorbed in the atmosphere, where they create a short-lived shower of particles. The H.E.S.S. telescopes detect the faint, short flashes of bluish light which these particles emit (named Cherenkov light, lasting a few billionths of a second), collecting the light with big mirrors which reflect onto extremely sensitive cameras. Each image gives the position on the sky of a single gamma-ray photon, and the amount of light collected gives the energy of the initial gamma ray. Building up the images photon by photon allows H.E.S.S. to create maps of astronomical objects as they appear in gamma rays. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Jan. 23, 2015, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by The H.E.S.S. Collaboration was titled, "The exceptionally powerful TeV γ-ray emitters in the Large Magellanic Cloud." view more
Credit: [Credit: Dalibor Nedbal]