Prof. Tomasz Bulik, director of the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw, said long-term international cooperation had helped Poland build strong research teams in observational astronomy, high-energy astrophysics and advanced scientific equipment.
Bulik spoke after Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski visited Namibia and South Africa last week.
The trip included Poland’s role in the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS), a major gamma-ray observatory in Namibia in which Poland is a stakeholder.
HESS studies gamma rays, a form of extremely energetic radiation from some of the most powerful processes in the universe. When a high-energy gamma ray enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it creates a cascade of particles. These particles produce a faint flash of blue Cherenkov light, lasting only a few billionths of a second.
HESS uses several large telescopes to capture that flash from different angles. This allows scientists to trace the gamma ray back to its source in space and estimate how much energy it carried.
"The research carried out there is not limited to analyzing individual objects in the universe," Bulik said. "We are trying to answer fundamental questions about the nature of space and basic physical theories. HESS is a tool that allows us to study the universe in an area that we would not be able to study with accelerators on Earth."
Bulik said HESS had been a pioneer in the study of very-high-energy photons for two decades and had produced more than 100 publications.
Polish scientists have been involved almost from the beginning. Today, 14 people from Poland, representing six scientific institutions, work at the observatory.
Poles also contributed to the construction of the site.
HESS has four 10-meter telescopes and one 30-meter telescope. Bulik said some of the one-meter mirrors in the larger telescope came from Poland.
A Polish-built system also aligns the mirrors so they work together as a single 960-square-meter mirror.
Bulik said Sikorski’s visit showed that the government recognized the importance of the work.
"We see that our efforts, as an astronomical community, have been noticed," he said. He added that the visit showed the Polish government "understood the role of the project in the internationalization of Polish science and in links between Polish researchers and scientific communities in Namibia and southern Africa."
Bulik said Poland's involvement in HESS had also opened the way for the country's participation in the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), a major gamma-ray astronomy project being built in Chile near the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory.
Polish experts working on the CTAO prepared a prototype of a small telescope. The project required cooperation between scientists and industry, including work on metal structures, mirrors, modern electronics and software.
"The resources and money we invest there come back to us in the form of further contracts, jobs, and so on," Bulik said. "Every experience gained in building a telescope is a technological challenge, but it also opens more doors and makes Polish industry a participant in the space market and in the market for precision orders.”
Polish institutions have been involved in major astronomy infrastructure in the Southern Hemisphere for more than 25 years.
Under an agreement signed in Pretoria in 1999, Polish researchers take part in the construction and operation of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in Sutherland, South Africa.
Poland's participation is coordinated by the Polish Academy of Sciences' Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (CAMK PAN).
Polish astronomers have access to 10 percent of observing time on SALT.
Polish researchers are also involved in Project Solaris, a global network of robotic telescopes used to study exoplanets and binary star systems. The network includes stations at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO).
Bulik chairs the Polish Academy of Sciences' Committee on Astronomy.
Prof. Rafał Moderski, director of the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center and Polish coordinator of HESS activity, also took part in Sikorski’s African visit, state news agency PAP reported.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP