8/28/04: (Belated) Ground Breaking at Black Rock Mesa! Pictures say more than a thousand words...
February 10, 2005: The Plan of Development is submitted to the Fillmore BLM Office.
February 2, 2005: BLM Deputy Director Jim Hughes from Washington DC visits the TA (my presentation).
January 19, 2005: Fillmore BLM visits the surface detector sites (some of my pictures).
December 21, 2004: Helicopters deploy the first 18 surface detectors on SITLA lands (some of my colleages' pictures). And their picture of our first fluorescence detector building on Black Rock Mesa.
August 2004: Newest pictures from
the county fair (you can see a scitillator station!).
8/28/04: (Belated) Ground Breaking at Black Rock Mesa!
Pictures say
more than a thousand words...
Under the leadership of the ICRR at the University of Tokyo Japanese physicists have obtained funding to build the Telescope Array an array of 576 scintillation detectors on the ground. A PDF version of the layout as shown above with the water features and another version with mountains shown in shaded relief are also available: Water and Mountains.
On the US side the collaboration is led by researchers at the University of Utah, Department of Physics. The Utah HiRes group has a proud tradition in the air fluorescence measurement of extensive air showers produced by high energy Cosmic Rays. From the first successful use of this technique by the Utah group under the leadership of the late Professor Keuffel it developed it in an ongoing series of experiments on the Army Dugway Proving Grounds.
In the summer of 2002 a single HiRes mirror was deployed on the Black Rock Mesa south of Deseret to compare the local atmosphere around Delta to Dugway. It recorded laser shots fired straight up into the night sky from the TV hill above Oak City - much in the same manner as we do on Dugway to monitor the atmospheric conditions during our data taking. The experiment on the Black Rock Mesa was conducted with the help of students from Delta High School, who took shifts with us during the moon-less nights that made up our observation time. The results from that experiment verified that the atmospheric conditions around Delta are very similar to those found on Dugway.
Our Japanese colleagues are the experts in scintillator based ground observation of highest energy cosmic rays. For ten years they observed cosmic rays with the AGASA experiment, coming to conclusions that seem somewhat different from what we see in our HiRes data. The AGASA experiment is finished now, and the next step for our Japanese colleagues is to build TA here in Utah with us. Like the bigger Auger observatory TA is a hybrid experiment, integrating both the HiRes and the AGASA observation technique in an effort to resolve any apparent discrepancy. Auger is a hybrid between fluorescence detectors and water Cerenkov counters on the ground as opposed to fluorescence and scintillators in TA. Since water Cerenkov detectors and scintillators each have their characteristic responses that emphasize different aspects of an extensive air shower, it should be particularly interesting and powerful to combine these two ground array techniques by interleaving them to measure the same showers. This is one important way in which co-siting Northern Auger and TA could generate synergy. Northern Auger is the necessary complement to its southern site, achieving all-sky coverage for the first time in the history of highest energy cosmic ray observation. TA is funded and will be built in Millard County, Utah - a site consciously chosen at a time when Millard County also was the designated site for northern Auger.
Below I have links to the transparencies I used in some recent talks of
mine. The talks were directed
to the general public and discuss TA in particular:
1.) talk
given at the College of Science Day 2003
2.) talk
given in Delta January 9, 2004
3.) talk
talk given in Delta January 21, 2004
4.) Public Hearing presentation given
in Fillmore March 3 and in Delta March 4, 2004.
5.) Presentation to the Air Force given
at Hill Air Force Base on March 10, 2004
6.) Range Program Planning Board Meeting
at Hill Air Force Base on April 8, 2004
7.) Presentation to BLM given
at the BLM Utah State offices on May 10, 2004
We keep looking into how to meaningfully involve the local High Schools in
our work. The decision to abandon the contest was forced upon us through
constraints imposed by agencies involved in the permitting process for
our project. Other opportunities will arise as the project unfolds.
Press releases concerning TA:
1.)
January 12, 2004
Here is the original list of scintillation counter coordinates. The coordinates were calculated by a computer program that I wrote and are not yet adapted to the local geography. Individual counters will have to be moved from their ideal computed position by hopefully not more than 50m absolute to respect the local terrain. Some locations have already been visited and preliminary adjustments have already been made where it was found necessary. Below you will find an updated list for the part of the array that is on public lands.
Well, time has moved on, and another job is done: The staking was
was done in a wonderful team effort with our Japanese colleagues!
Everybody was working together to keep the schedule, and despite one
and a half days lost to rain and subsequently muddy terrain we finished
by 11am on Friday, June 25. The result of this effort is a new and final
list of detector locations for all sites on public lands. For the moment
it still contains five locations where we have two sites staked each.
Before the middle of July we will have these ambiguities resolved.
The preliminary list with the five ambiguous sites can be found
here. All coordinates are WGS84.
Food for thought: Many communities and counties have recognized the value offered by the beautiful desert night sky and adopted a dark sky ordinance. As discussed in the link there are good and bad ways to design such an ordinance, but little doubt seems to exist that it helps - if you like the stars, that is.
Please come again: Updates are certain.