Artist’s rendering of the CTAO southern site

This artistic rendering shows the approved configuration of the CTAO in its southern site, less than 10 km southeast of ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert. This so-called Alpha Configuration includes 14 Medium-Sized Telescopes (11.5 m wide) and 37 Small-Sized Telescopes (4 m wide). Thanks to their different light-collecting areas they can cover gamma rays of medium and high energies.

The Alpha Configuration does not consider Large-Sized Telescopes (23 m wide) in the CTAO's southern array, tailored for lower energies, but it includes the preparation of the foundation for four of them, as well as the foundation for three more Small-Sized Telescopes, to allow for the construction of these telescopes in a future enhancement of the array.