Seminar
Ground-based, very high energy gamma-ray astronomy, a tool for exploring the ultrarelativistic Universe

Abstract

The window of very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray astronomy was only opened 20 years ago by the first observation of TeV gamma-rays from the CRAB nebula. Since then the field is rapidly expanding and we are approaching the first 100 VHE sources. In contrast to the many orders of magnitude larger flux of charged VHE Cosmic Rays, gamma-rays can be extrapolated back to their sources, the high energy particle processes mostly in stellar environments and thus allows us to retrieve basic information about the ultra-relativistic universe. In my talk I will shortly describe the gamma-ray production mechanisms related to these ultra relativistic processes, losses during the transport of gamma-rays through the universe and the detection methods. This is followed by a review of classes of gamma ray emitters and the relation to multi-wavelength respectively multi-messenger observations. Because of the very rich findings of the past years some restriction to highlight observations have to be made. The talk concludes with an outlook for the next years including possible prospects to build the so-called North-CTA (Cherenkov Telescope Array) on the Canary Islands.