Stock Photo - The MAGIC Telescopes, Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The cosmos and its evolution are studied using all radiation, in particular electromagnetic waves The observable spectrum extends from radio waves to infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, gamma-rays and finally very high energy gamma rays starting at energies of 10 GeV Observations at visible wavelengths 5 to 1 micrometer have a history of centuries, gamma astronomy by satellites keV to few GeV and ground-based telescopes above 300 GeV are end-of-20th century newcomers. The MAGIC telescope can detect very high energy gamma rays in a range of energies where no other telescope in the world can operate, so it opens up a brand new window into the universe INSTRUMENTS: MAGIC is not only huge it has the largest telescope mirror in the world but also pioneers a number of technical developments that had never been applied to Cherenkov telescopes before The mirror is extremely light and can be moved to any position in the sky in less than thirty seconds It is made up of 270 individual mirror panels that can be independently focussed using an active mirror control system equipped with lasers The camera, fully built in Spain, is equipped with several hundreds of very sensitive and extremely fast photodetectors The signals produced in these detectors are trasmitted over optical fibers to special electronics that digitize them at the fastest rate ever used for this kind of detectors TECHNICAL DATA: ´Cherenkov Telescopes´ are telescopes for the detection of very high energy gamma rays Although they get absorbed in the atmosphere, they can be observed indirectly, because the absorption process proceeds by creation of a shower of high-energy secondary particles The Cherenkov method uses the fact that the charged particles in the shower emit light, the so-called Cherenkov radiation This light can be observed on the surface of the earth by sufficiently sensitive an instrument: a Cherenkov telescope