Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2007 APS Four Corners Section/SPS Zone 16 Joint Fall Meeting
Volume 52, Number 14
Friday–Saturday, October 19–20, 2007; Flagstaff, Arizona
Session B4: Astro: Observatories |
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Chair: Denise Stephens, Brigham Young University Room: Physical Sciences (Bldg. 19) Room 321 |
Friday, October 19, 2007 2:10PM - 2:22PM |
B4.00001: Status of the Southern Utah Observatory (SUO) 32" Telescope David Kieda, R. Wayne Springer, Paolo Gondolo The University of Utah is building a new Astronomical Observatory at a high altitude site in Southern Utah. The Southern Utah Observatory (SUO) Telescope will be outfitted with a 32" R-C telescope manufactured by DFM, and will feature optical and IR focal plane instrumentation as well as capability for remote/robotic operations. In this talk, I will describe the status of SUO Telescope Project, including surveys of atmospheric seeing and night sky darkness measured at potential observatory locations. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 19, 2007 2:22PM - 2:34PM |
B4.00002: Pierre Auger Observatory: Anisotropy studies around the Galactic center David Thomas The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest cosmic ray observatory in the world, located in the plains of central western Argentina. We present results for cosmic ray anisotropy searches in the direction of the Galactic center at energies in the EeV range, using data from January, 2004 to September, 2007. This is a larger data set than our previously published results. We test several scenarios for sources of cosmic rays arriving from the Galactic center with energies between 0.1 and 10 EeV. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 19, 2007 2:34PM - 2:46PM |
B4.00003: Thermal Modeling of Auger Surface Detectors Yevgeniy Petrov, Patrick Burns The Southern Site of Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory started collecting data in 2004. The data sample collected by now is already several times bigger that data collected by each of preceding experiments in the field allowing for new significant results regarding cosmic ray energy spectrum and arrival directions. Meanwhile, progress is being made towards the Northern Site construction in South East Colorado. While appreciating fundamental theoretical physics, development of which is the ultimate goal of such projects, it is also necessary to say that it is smaller scale tasks within a project that allow for this progress to happen. One such task in Auger North is thermal modeling of surface detectors (tanks filled with purified water). The goal is to be able to predict amount of insulation needed to prevent water inside from freezing and damaging the detector under bad weather conditions that often happen in Colorado during the winter. The models used and preliminary results will be described. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 19, 2007 2:46PM - 2:58PM |
B4.00004: VERITAS observation of high-energy gamma-ray emission from 1ES1218+304 Matthew Kress In the 2007 observing season, we performed observations of the extragalactic BL Lac object 1ES1218+304 (red shift of z = 0.182) with the VERITAS imaging air-Cherenkov gamma-ray telescopes, located in southern Arizona at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. This source has been previously detected by the MAGIC gamma-ray observatory. Using the GrISU set of standard analysis tools, we have detected 1ES1218+304 with high significance during this observation period. In this talk, I will describe the analysis of the data and the detection of this source, and will compare our observations with the MAGIC results. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 19, 2007 2:58PM - 3:10PM |
B4.00005: Search for exotic particles in the High Resolution Fly's Eye data set. Adam Blake The High Resolution Fly's Eye detector operated from 1997 to 2006 observing cosmic rays with energies greater than 10$^{17.5}$ eV. These cosmic rays have energies five orders of magnitude higher than achieved in accelerators. With information calculated using stereo reconstruction, the HiRes data can be examined for evidence of exotic particles. In particular, the speed a shower develops in the atmosphere can indicate non-relativistic particles with high energies (for example, strangelets). Showers that develop faster than the speed of light could indicate super luminal phenomena like tachyons. This process can also be used to check our understanding of our reconstruction programs and our data. I will discuss both the current status of the exotic particle search and the use of these methods to check our data. [Preview Abstract] |
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