It is a new major ground base gamma ray observaotry with an array of seven 10m - 12m optical reflectors for gamma ray astronomy in the 50GeV - 50TeV range. The construction of VERITAS has been endorsed by several national scientific panels and advisory groups. It will complement the next gama-ray space telescope GLAST, which is scheduled for launch by NASA in 2005.

The Whipple collaboration, which pioneered the Imaging Atmospheric  Cherenkov  Technique for the detection of  very high energy gamma rays , is based at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Southern Arizona, in the United States. The primary purpose of the collaboration's research effort is the search for and study of celestial sources of gamma rays in the energy range of 250GeV - 20TeV

The SGARFACE (Short GAmma Ray Front Air Cherenkov) aims at detecting short 0.1-100 microsecond bursts of gamma rays above 200MeV using the Whipple Atmospheric Imaging Cherenkov Telescope