Have you ever wanted to photograph a particle accelerator?

Photograph taken at the 2009 Photowalk at DESY (Courtesy: interactions.org)

By Hamish Johnston

Today I received a press release for an event called the Particle Physics Photowalk.

The idea is that amateur photographers are given access to five of the world’s leading accelerator labs for a day – a “rare opportunity to photograph state-of-the-art accelerators and detectors in all their beauty and complexity”, says the release.

The participating labs are CERN in Switzerland; DESY in Germany; Fermilab in the US; KEK in Japan; and TRIUMF in Canada.

How generous, I thought, for CERN to shutdown the LHC for a day to let in a gaggle of shutterbugs!

I forwarded the press release to a colleague who is a keen amateur photographer and he was on the phone immediately to CERN.

It is bad news, I’m afraid – the LHC will be completely off limits, including the control room.

Of course it’s silly to expect CERN to shutdown the LHC for a bunch of amateur photographers, but barring them from the control room seems a bit mean!

You can register for the Photowalk here.