A Wide Field of View Air Cherenkov Imaging Telescope

Contemporary imaging air Cherenkov telescopes (IACT) for ground-based very high energy (VHE) gamma ray astronomy have prime focus optical design. Typically these telescopes have (2-4)° wide field of view (FoV). They use F/0.7 - F/1.2 optics and provide (3-10)' resolution in the FoV. Gener- ally a well designed telescope that includes more than one optical element, will offer some advantages not available in the case of prime focus designs. Those advantages could be a) the wider FoV, b) higher and more homogeneous optical resolution in the FoV, c) faster optics/more compact size and d) low degree of isochronous distortion of focused light. Also, they can allow one in a single observation to monitor the gamma ray activity in a sizeable portion of the sky. Obviously in a relatively short time one can perform a sensitive all-sky survey. We report below on a 15° wide FoV telescope design.