With its various types of detectors, HEGRA took data between 1987 and 2002, at which point it was dismantled in order to build its successor, MAGIC, at the same site.

It was located at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma at a height of 2200 m above sea level.

These counters had a wide field of view but could only be operated during clear, moonless nights, like the atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes.

The energy threshold of the scintillator array was between 40 and 100 TeV, depending on the kind of primary cosmic ray particle.

There were two more types of detectors at the HEGRA site: the CRT (Cosmic Ray Tracking)[1] and the CLUE (Cherenkov Light Ultraviolet Experiment)[2] Archived 2020-05-20 at the Wayback Machine.

A remarkable achievement of the instrument was the detection of the most energetic photons observed from an extragalactic object, at 16 TeV, originating from Markarian 501 (Mrk 501).