People at IASF-Pa creates instrumentation for science.
The Instrument Science people at IASF-Pa creates research instrumentation, and validates and calibrates the instruments, on ground and in space, as the UVscope for the Night Sky Background estimation, Cadmium Zinc Telluride focal plane prototypes to be used in a balloon-borne mission, and Volcanoes muon imaging using Cerenkov telescopes.
The knowledge of the diffuse Night Sky Background light (NSB) level in the ultraviolet region is necessary in the analysis of cosmic rays detected by fluorescence experiments and in the Cerenkov telescopes. The NSB depends on the geographic and atmosphere conditions, including humidity, pressure, dusts, airglow, moonlight, stars and planets. The measurement of the diffuse NSB in the UV energy region is therefore a complementary and integrating part of the activities of the cosmic rays and TeV gamma-ray astronomy group at IASF-Palermo. This activity is performed through ground-based observations with the UVscope instrument. The instrument is essentially a light detector working as photon counter. Its sensitive unit is a high speed response photomultiplier with efficiency extended to the UV band.
Read more about the UVscope.
In recent years various instruments on board satellite missions have demonstrated the need to extend high sensitivity measurements with fine angular resolution coupled to good spectroscopic performance into the hard X-ray regime. These requirements have stimulated the development of hard X-ray focusing optics such as multilayer concentrators.
Read more about Cadmium Zinc Telluride.