The MEGA project

We describe the development of a new telescope for Medium Energy Gamma-Ray Astronomy (MEGA) for the energy band 0.4-50 MeV. As a successor to COMPTEL and EGRET (low energies), MEGA aims to improve the sensitivity for astronomical sources by at least an order of magnitude. It could thus fill the severe sensitivity gap between scheduled or operating hard-X-ray and high-energy gamma-ray missions and open the way for a future Advanced Compton Telescope. MEGA records and images gamma-rays by completely tracking Compton and Pair creation events in a stack of double sided Si-strip track detectors surrounded by a pixelated CsI calorimeter. A scaled down prototype has been built and calibrations using radioactive sources and exposures to an accelerator generated gamma-ray beam were performed in 2003. A balloon flight is planned for 2004. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.