Site Location Announced for Upcoming Southern Wide-Field Gamma Ray Observatory

Site Location Announced for Upcoming Southern Wide-Field Gamma Ray Observatory

Scientists of the Southern Wide-Field Gamma Ray Observatory (SWGO) project have announced they have chosen the site for the future observatory to be in Pampa La Bola in Chile, which will make it the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere!

The groundbreaking SWGO facility is designed to be the next-generation wide-field ground-based observatory for the detection of very-high- to ultra-high-energy gamma rays. It will consist of an array of specially designed water tanks equipped with the most advanced technology to detect particles originating from the interaction of the highest-energy photon radiation from space with the Earth’s atmosphere.

The SWGO observatory, will be located at an altitude of 4,770 meters in the Atacama Astronomical Park. Observations from SWGO will offer insights into some of the most volatile events in the universe, from black holes and neutron stars to supernovae and gamma-ray bursts.

The SWGO Steering Committee is composed of representatives of the member countries Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, South Korea, United Kingdom, and the United States.

One of the contributors to this facility is J. Patrick Harding, a research scientist at the New Mexico Consortium and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Harding  is a SWGO Steering Committee National Representative from the USA, and works on this project via Michigan Tech University (MTU) which is leading the project titled:

WoU-MMA: Research & Development for the Southern Wide-Field Gamma-Ray Observatory.

“Achieving this milestone is a testament to the hard work put in by the Collaboration members and the site representatives from Chile, Peru and Argentina,” said Harding. “We collected information on the science achievable at each site and costs, but also environmental stewardship and the positive effect we can have on the local community. I look forward to working with the Collaboration and our Chilean colleagues to make SWGO a premier international gamma-ray observatory.”

Construction of the SWGO detectors are expected to begin in 2026.

To read more about this incredible project see:

• https://www.swgo.org/SWGOWiki/doku.php?id=site_press_release
• https://www.mtu.edu/news/press/releases/2024/mtu-professor-other-project-leaders-select-site-for-southern-widefield-gammaray-observatory.html

Figure at top of page: VHE γ-ray image of the SS 433/W50 region in Galactic coordinates.