First Light with the Dark100 Array of PANOSETI Telescopes at Palomar Observatory
Dark100 is the first phase of an extensive array of Panoramic SETI (PANOSETI) telescopes at Palomar Observatory, California. PANOSETI telescopes are small, 0.5-m Fresnel lens telescopes instrumented with 1024-pixel silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) cameras. The telescopes were originally designed to search for ultra-fast optical transients, but they also function as cost-effective imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs). Dark100 will use seven of these widely separated IACTs to map the ultra-high-energy (UHE) gamma-ray sources on the Galactic Plane at high resolution. Dark100 will also leverage the IACT technique to search for evidence of ultra-heavy dark matter in a mass range that extends beyond 100 TeV. Deployment of the first four telescopes and enclosures was completed in December 2025, and commissioning of the next three is scheduled to finish by the end of 2026. The array has so far collected more than 100 hours of 3-telescope data on sources including the Crab Nebula and Markarian 421. Here we present the current status of Dark100.