Gamma-ray hunt on La Palma: Four giant telescopes officially inaugurated

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On the Canary Island of La Palma, researchers have officially inaugurated four giant mirror telescopes that will jointly search for high-energy gamma radiation from distant galaxies. According to the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY), around 250 guests from leading research institutions attended the ceremony at Roque de los Muchachos on October 15, 2026. The facility forms the northern subarray of the international Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), which is being built in parallel on La Palma and in Chile.

The four Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) are, according to the research consortium, each roughly 23 meters in size and consist of 198 identical hexagonal mirror facets. At an altitude of 2,200 meters, they gaze into the night sky and capture a faint blue Cherenkov glow — the trail of light produced when gamma rays from space strike the upper Earth's atmosphere. The first of the telescopes had already gone into operation in 2018 as a prototype; three more have now been completed.

With the full configuration, the scientists hope to gain a deep view into the past of the universe. One of the first signals registered reportedly originates from a distance of around eight billion light-years. That gamma-ray astronomy exists at all is down to a coincidence: a false alarm during the monitoring of banned nuclear tests in the 1960s had alerted U.S. researchers to a signal from space.

The CTAO is to be expanded in the coming years into the world's largest observatory for very high-energy gamma radiation. In the Southern Hemisphere, a counterpart with medium-sized telescopes is currently being built in the Chilean Atacama Desert.

Status: October 16, 2026, 09:30. Further updates to follow.