The MAGIC Telescope

The Magor Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov telescope (MAGIC) is at its commissioning phase and will start to ooperate in mid-2003. MAGIC is a second generation Cherenkov telescope with many improvements and innovative solutions aiming at the detection of low energy gamma rays (E>10 GeV) through the atmospheric emission of Cherenkov light. The VHE region between 10 and 300 GeV is yet unexplored, limited at lower energies by EGRET observations, and at higher energies by the first generation of Cherenkov telescopes. To this energy window corresponds a big gap in the number of observed sources by satellite and ground-based experiments. Thus an increase of the number of sources detectable in this region by MAGIC is forseen. Observations in this region of the spectrum are also expected to provide key data for the understanding of the non-thermal gamma-ray emission from astrophysical sources, as well as new prospects for observational cosmology and astroparticle physics