Rome: March 13^th 2018, at Headquarters of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics INAF, the kick-off round of the multilateral negotiations to establish an ERIC organization to the manage the Cherenkov Telescope Array project as part of the EU’s ESFRI infrastructure roadmap had take place.

This initiative was leaded by the Italian Government based on a resolution of the CTAO gGbmH – (Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory), the organization which is currently in charge of managing the project, whose Council decided, unanimously, to select Italy, under INAF’s management, to host the final legal entity which will govern and run the Observatory.

The Italian Government proposed the ERIC legal formula to run a global project, whose infrastructure will be located outside Europe and involves scientists from more than 20 Countries.

“The aim is to make Europe a hub for global science”, said Nichi D’Amico, president of INAF, “in a world where science is increasing the need for large scale research infrastructure, set-up appealing research infrastructures is a must of any initiative. INAF is contributing to the CTA world-class project by providing the best scientific environment for the CTAO HQ, which will be located in Bologna, as well by promoting the most inclusive membership policy in the CTAO governance. We are convinced that ERIC will provide the optimum legal framework to allows to advance the scientific collaboration at global level. This also adds to INAF’s credibility as a global science leader and we want to strengthen our contribution and platform in the years ahead.

In addition, President D’Amico said “Europe is playing a leading global role in the concept construction of the major astronomical infrastructures of the future: we can see significant progress with the European Extremely Large Telescope, E-ELT.  The Square Kilometer Array, SKA, has completed the political negotiations and it is evolving into an IGO.  These two major infrastructures will be operative in parallel with the Cherenkov Telescope Array, CTA. Italy, through INAF, is making a significant contribution to each of these telescopes and looks forward to continuing to do so in collaboration with existing and new partners”.

CTA is expect to provide an unprecedented insight into a variety of intriguing phenomena. CTA observations of the Galactic Center region, of the Large Magellanic Cloud, of the Galactic Plane will facilitate a number of important scientific goals, including:

1. CTA is expected to discover new and unexpected phenomena in the galaxy, such as new source classes and new types of transient and variable phenomena;
2. CTA will detect hundreds of new very high energy galactic sources, particularly pulsar wind nebulae and supernova remnants;
3. CTA will discover  new gamma-ray binaries.

In addition:

• CTA will be able to detect diffuse gamma-ray emission from one of the nearest galaxy clusters, Perseus;
• CTA will probe Star Forming Systems: Cosmic rays may play a major role in the regulation of the star-formation process;
• CTA will observe of course a variety of Transient Phenomena

• CTA will probe Active Galactic Nuclei: Galaxies hosting an actively accreting supermassive black hole;

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (www.ctatelescope.org) is a global science enterprise to deliver the largest array of Cherenkov telescopes ever built to open a new window on the Universe by searching TeV energy astronomical sources.

• For further inforamtion on CTAO, please contact: info@cta-observatory.org

• For further information on INAF, please contact: ufficiostampa@inaf.it