Pierre Auger Observatory
Pierre Auger Observatory is an international cosmic ray observatory designed to detect ultra-high-energy cosmic ray particles (with energies beyond 1020 electron-volts). These high-energy particles have an estimated arrival rate of just 1 per square kilometer per century, therefore, in order to record a large number of these events, the Auger Observatory has created a detection area of 3,000 km² (the size of Rhode Island, USA) in Mendoza Province, western Argentina.
A larger cosmic-ray detector array is also planned for the northern hemisphere as part of the Pierre Auger complex.
The Pierre Auger Observatory, in addition to obtaining directional information from the cluster of water tanks used to observe the cosmic-ray-shower components, also has four telescopes trained on the night sky to observe fluorescence of the nitrogen molecules as the shower particles traverse the sky, giving further directional information on the original cosmic ray particle.
Read more about this topic: Ultra-high-energy Cosmic Ray
Famous quotes containing the word observatory:
“Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)