From Geoffrey Pendleton, University of Alabama in Huntsville
We appreciate the exposure you provided for the Gamma-ray Large Area Space
Telescope (GLAST), which will carry an ultra-sensitive gamma-ray detector to
study galaxies near black holes
(This Week, 12 September, p 16).
However, I’d like to point out that the GLAST mission may in fact use one of
two detectors. One is the fibre system described in your article, but the other
is a silicon strip detector system being developed by a team led by Peter
Michelson from Stanford University. A modification to the silicon instrument is
being evaluated by Allen Zych of the University of California, Riverside.
Like the fibre system, the silicon detector will offer a 160° view of the
sky.
