Photo by Aaron Burnett

Fred and Lillian Norman talk with Johannes Bluemer of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Tuesday evening following a public presentation by the Pierre Auger Collaboration at Lamar Community College. The collaboration is moving forward with plans to construct a $120 million observatory in the region to monitor and study cosmic rays.

LAMAR—About fifty people were on hand Tuesday evening as representatives from the Pierre Auger Collaboration presented an overview of some of their research and their plans for an observatory in southeastern Colorado.

The presentation was part of a five day conference being held on the Lamar Community College campus by the collaboration.

Johannes Bluemer of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology explained in relatively simple terms the principles behind the operation of the observatory and the goals of the collaboration.

The proposed observatory would span approximately 8,000 square miles and consist of about 4,000 detector tanks. Multiple telescope sites will also be incorporated in the final design. The estimated cost of the observatory is $120 million.

Currently, over 400 institutions from 17 nations are members of the collaboration. Funding for the proposed observatory would come from a variety of sources. Pablo Bauleo, from Colorado State University, an organizer for the Lamar event, estimated that up to two thirds of the funding for the project could come from international sources.

The Pierre Auger Collaboration currently operates a cosmic ray observatory in Argentina. The proposed southern Colorado observatory would operate using relatively the same technology as the Argentine site.

The collaboration intends to use the observatory to study high energy cosmic rays. The rays enter the earth’s atmosphere then collide with air molecules creating cascades of secondary particles. The resulting “air shower” would then be observed by the array. When the data from the shower is analyzed, a direction or source of the cosmic ray could be potentially discovered. In November, 2007 the collaboration announced that the source of the highest energy cosmic rays appear to be linked to violent black holes.