First Light with the Dark100 Array of PANOSETI Telescopes at Palomar Observatory
Abstract
Dark100 is the first phase of an extensive array of Panoramic SETI (PANOSETI) telescopes at Palomar Observatory, California. PANOSETI telescopes are small, 0.5-m Fresnel lens telescopes instrumented with 1024-pixel silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) cameras. The telescopes were originally designed to search for ultra-fast optical transients, but they also function as cost-effective imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs). Dark100 will use seven of these widely separated IACTs to map the ultra-high-energy (UHE) gamma-ray sources on the Galactic Plane at high resolution. Dark100 will also leverage the IACT technique to search for evidence of ultra-heavy dark matter in a mass range that extends beyond 100 TeV. Deployment of the first four telescopes and enclosures was completed in December 2025, and commissioning of the next three is scheduled to finish by the end of 2026. The array has so far collected more than 100 hours of 3-telescope data on sources including the Crab Nebula and Markarian 421. Here we present the current status of Dark100.
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BibTeX
@misc{korzoun2026first,
title = {{First Light with the Dark100 Array of PANOSETI Telescopes at Palomar Observatory}},
author = {Nikolas Korzoun and Aaron Brown and Stephen Fegan and Luca Fiedler and Benjamin Godfrey and Jamie Holder and Paul Horowitz and Andrew W. Howard and Alyssa Johnson and Wei Liu and Jérôme Maire and Yuriy Popovych and Elisa Pueschel and Nicolas Rault-Wang and Sruthiranjani Ravikularaman and Dan Werthimer and Shelley A. Wright},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.41775},
eprint = {2610.41775},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41775},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - First Light with the Dark100 Array of PANOSETI Telescopes at Palomar Observatory
AU - Nikolas Korzoun
AU - Aaron Brown
AU - Stephen Fegan
AU - Luca Fiedler
AU - Benjamin Godfrey
AU - Jamie Holder
AU - Paul Horowitz
AU - Andrew W. Howard
AU - Alyssa Johnson
AU - Wei Liu
AU - Jérôme Maire
AU - Yuriy Popovych
AU - Elisa Pueschel
AU - Nicolas Rault-Wang
AU - Sruthiranjani Ravikularaman
AU - Dan Werthimer
AU - Shelley A. Wright
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.41775
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.41775
AB - Dark100 is the first phase of an extensive array of Panoramic SETI (PANOSETI) telescopes at Palomar Observatory, California. PANOSETI telescopes are small, 0.5-m Fresnel lens telescopes instrumented with 1024-pixel silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) cameras. The telescopes were originally designed to search for ultra-fast optical transients, but they also function as cost-effective imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs). Dark100 will use seven of these widely separated IACTs to map the ultra-high-energy (UHE) gamma-ray sources on the Galactic Plane at high resolution. Dark100 will also leverage the IACT technique to search for evidence of ultra-heavy dark matter in a mass range that extends beyond 100 TeV. Deployment of the first four telescopes and enclosures was completed in December 2025, and commissioning of the next three is scheduled to finish by the end of 2026. The array has so far collected more than 100 hours of 3-telescope data on sources including the Crab Nebula and Markarian 421. Here we present the current status of Dark100.
ER -