CTA Array at Night with Air Showers

An artist's rendering of the Cherenkov Telescope Array at night. The CTA is the next generation of ground-based instruments designed to detect gamma-rays. When gamma-rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, they produce a shower of secondary particles which can travel faster than the speed of light in air, creating short-lived flashes of Cherenkov radiation — which the CTA's mirrors and high-speed cameras can detect.