YerPhI is among the founding members of H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) collaboration. The collaboration operates a system of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) that investigates cosmic gamma rays in the energy range from 10s of GeV to 10s of TeV. The H.E.S.S. is located in the Khomas Highland in Namibia, at an altitude of 1800m above sea level. It is an array of five IACTs, with four telescopes (HESS I) of 12m diameter arranged in a square of 120m side length and one telescope (HESS II) of 28m diameter in the center of array. First 4 telescopes (Phase I) were operational since 2004 and system of 5 telescopes (Phase II) – since 2012.
The H.E.S.S. observatory is operated by collaboration, which is consortium of over 40 institutions from 13 countries. As of May 2020, the H.E.S.S. collaboration has published over 180 research articles in high-impact scientific journals, including ‘Nature’ and ‘Science’ journals.
In 2006, H.E.S.S. was awarded the Descartes Prize of the European Commission and in 2010 the Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society. In a survey in 2006, H.E.S.S. was ranked the 10th most influential observatory worldwide.
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