The telescope ‘Gamma-1’ is designed to investigate cosmic gamma rays in the energy range from 50 MeV to 5000 MeV. The geometrical sensitive area of the telescope amounts to 1500 cm2, the angular resolution in each direction is equal to 1.2° at the energy 300 MeV and is about 20′ when including a coded mask in the telescope, the energy resolution changes from 70% at 100 MeV to 35% at 550 MeV. The characteristics of the telescope and its systems have been determined by the Monte-Carlo method as well as by accelerator calibrations. Discrete sources at the intensity level of 10−7 quanta cm−2 s−1 may be recorded in a year of observations with the gamma-ray telescope ‘Gamma-1’ with a source location accuracy of ≈ 10 arc min.

The ‘Gamma-1’ telescope has been developed through a collaboration of scientists in the USSR and France in order to conduct γ-ray astronomical observations within the energy range from 50 to 5000 MeV. The major characteristics of the telescope were established by Monte-Carlo simulations and calibrations made with the aid of electron and ‘tagged’ γ-ray beams produced by an accelerator, and these have been found to be as follows: the effective area for photons coming along the instrument's axis varies from about 50 cm2 at Eγ = 50 MeV to approximately 230 cm2 at Eγ ≥ 300 MeV; the angular resolution (half opening of the cone embracing 68% events) is equal to 2.7° at Eγ = 100 MeV, and 1.8° at Eγ = 300 MeV; the energy resolution (FWHM) varies from 70% to 35% as the energy of the detected photons increases from 100 to 550 MeV; the telescope's field-of-view at the half-sensitivity level is 300–450 square degrees depending upon the spectrum of the detected radiation, and the event selection logic. Proceeding from the thus obtained characteristics it is demonstrated that a point source producing a photon flux J (Eγ ≥ 100 MeV) = 3 × 10-7 cm-2 s-1, can be detected with a 5σ significance by observing it during 106 s at the level of the Cygnus background, and a source having intensity J (Eγ ≥ 100 MeV) = 10-6 cm-2 s-1 can be detected to within a mean square positional accuracy of about 15′.