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T3 The MAGIC Telescopes

This is the MAGIC telescope (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescope). The nearer "basket" won't be operational until next year, but the father "basket" is already going strong. Instead of one big mirror, it has over 1,000 mirrors, each 50cm square, to form a compound mirror 17m (56 ft) across. That's the biggest telescope mirror in the world.
It's not an optical telescope. Instead of observing visible light, it's looking for gamma rays. The snag is that gamma rays don't get through the earth's atmosphere, so it's actually looking for the cascade of particles in the upper atmosphere caused by the gamma rays.
The whole basket weighs about 60 tons and can slew to point at any part of the sky within 20 seconds. This is important, because gamma ray bursts only last for a few minutes.

Eso es el telescopio MAGIC. La "cesta" m&aaacute;s cerca empiezará a funcionar en 2008, pero la cesta más lejano ya observa. En vez de un espejo grande, consiste en más de mil especjos de 50 cm cuadrado, que forman un espejo compuesto de 17m de diametro. Por lo tanto, es el espejo de telescopoi más grande del mundo.
No es un telescopio optico. En vez de observar la luz visible, busca rayos gamma. El problems es que la atmofera filtra los rayos gamma, asi que el telescopio busca la cascada de particulos creados cuando un rayo gamma golpe la estratospheria.
La cesta pesa unos 60 tonelados, y puede moverse para apuntarse a cualquier parte del cielo en menos de 20 segundos. Esto es importante, porque las ráfagas de rayo gammas duros solamente unos minudos.

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