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Inter-calibration of atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes with UAV-based airborne calibration system
The recent advances in the flight capability of remotely piloted aerial vehicles (here after referred to as UAVs) have afforded the astronomical community the possibility of a new telescope calibration technique: UAV-based calibration. Building upon a feasibility study which characterised the potent...
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Published in: | Astroparticle physics 2022-07, Vol.140, p.102695, Article 102695 |
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Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | The recent advances in the flight capability of remotely piloted aerial vehicles (here after referred to as UAVs) have afforded the astronomical community the possibility of a new telescope calibration technique: UAV-based calibration. Building upon a feasibility study which characterised the potential that a UAV-based calibration system has for the future Cherenkov Telescope Array, we created a first-generation UAV-calibration prototype and undertook a field-campaign of inter-calibrating the sensitivity of the H.E.S.S. telescope array with two successful calibration flights. In this paper we report the key results of our first test campaign: firstly, by comparing the intensity of the UAV-calibration events, as recorded by the individual HESS-I cameras, we find that a UAV-based inter-calibration is consistent with the standard muon inter-calibration technique at the level of 5.4% and 5.8% for the two individual UAV-calibration runs. Secondly, by comparing the position of the UAV-calibration signal on the camera focal plane, for a variety of telescope pointing models, we were able to constrain the pointing accuracy of the HESS-I telescopes at the tens of arc-second accuracy level. This is consistent with the pointing accuracy derived from other pointing calibration methods. Importantly both the inter-calibration and pointing accuracy results were achieved with a first-generation UAV-calibration prototype, which eludes to the potential of the technique and highlights that a UAV-based system is a viable calibration technique for current and future ground-based γ-ray telescope arrays. |
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ISSN: | 0927-6505 1873-2852 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.astropartphys.2022.102695 |