Tuesday, September 4th, 10:30am

VERITAS, an array of four 12m diameter Cherenkov telescopes, is a ground-based observatory designed to explore the very high energy gamma-ray sky in the energy band between 100 GeV and 50 TeV. The construction and commissioning of VERITAS has taken place during  the last year and the telescope array began full operation in early 2007. I will present the current status of the observatory, and review the results of the observations carried out during the past year. In particular I will talk in detail about the results of Crab Observations, and will present the energy spectrum of the Crab Nebular emission and the upper limit on the pulsed emission from the Crab Pulsar.

Monday, August 6th, 2:00pm, ISB 310

In the past two years pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) emerged as the source population most frequently emitting VHE-gamma-rays in our Galaxy. Pulsars themselves are also emitters of gamma-rays and six pulsars could be detected by EGRET above 5 GeV. However, none of these pulsars was detected by a ground based experiment above 100 GeV. These non-detections indicate that the gamma-ray spectra of these pulsars must cutoff around a few 10 GeV, which makes pulsars one of the most challenging targets for ground based gamma-ray experiments.

I present results obtained with the MAGIC telescope, an air Cherenkov telescope with a trigger threshold of about 50 GeV. Therefore, MAGIC is a suitable instrument to search for pulsars from ground. I discuss our observations of the Crab nebula and pulsar, PSR B1951+32 / CTB 80, PSR B1957+20 and LS I 61+303. In the final part of the presentation I discuss our activities to further lower the threshold of the experiment and improve its sensitivity.