APOD: 2022 August 11 - Perseids and MAGIC

Good evening, Rallypoint, and welcome to the August 11th edition of Astronomy PIcture of the Day (APOD): "Perseids and MAGIC." What's MAGIC? Or, more accurately, what's a MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov) telescope?

To answer that question, we need need to first understand what Cherenkov radiation is. Let's start with a sonic boom: the sound associated with shock waves created when an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound. Now, imagine an object traveling in a vacuum at the speed of light. Imagine that same object now traveling through a denser medium. We are talking high energy objects (or particles), and their energies are measured in millions of electron-volts. The 'sonic boom' of a high-energy particle is called Cherenkov radiation (named after Pavel Cherenkov, who was the first to detect this radiation experimentally). And that's where the MAGIC telescopes come in.

A MAGIC telescope is designed to measure the 'sonic boom' of high-energy (e.g. gamma-ray and cosmic-ray) particles as they travel through the atmosphere. The MAGIC telescopes are located on the Roque de los Muchachos European Northern Observatory on the Canary Island of La Palma at 2200 meters (about 7200 feet) above sea level. Looks like it is also a good place to take in a meteor shower.