Jana Moschner Dortmund

Estimation of Observation Time for the MAGIC telescopes (pdf)

Due to the opacity of the Earth's atmosphere for gamma-rays, ground-based measurements are performed with specific telescopes, e.g. the MAGIC telescopes. Capable to observe only a limited field of view during night, it requires an evaluation of the needed observation time to detect and study a given source. The aim of this study is to estimate the significance and observation time of the MAGIC telescopes for a particular source. The significance is calculated according to the number of events in the source region and background fluctuations. The measured rate of gamma-rays at the MAGIC telescopes is determined by the effective collection area and the differential flux, taking into account that the intrinsic flux is absorbed by photons of the extragalactic background light dependent on the distance. The current result of this work is a program to estimate the significance and observation time given various information on the source, based on Fermi measurements.