Pierre Auger’s Project started as a 6 month workshop on January 30th 1995. A main group of 10 scientists worked on Fermilab. The other 140 participants went to Fermilab to the meetings but they worked on their own institutions mainly, electronically communicated in a “wall less workshop.”

HISTORY
Pierre Auger’s Project started as a 6 month workshop on January 30th 1995. A main group of 10 scientists worked on Fermilab. The other 140 participants went to Fermilab to the meetings but they worked on their own institutions mainly, electronically communicated in a “wall less workshop.”

In October 1995 a Design Group published a book describing a cosmic ray detector of Pierre Auger. The report explains the project’s scientific motivation and shows a technical design, a vision of the possible places and costs estimate. It serves as a base to make a fund proposal to countries involved.

Up to the present, members of Pierre Auger Project come from Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, USA, South Africa, Sweden and Vietnam. Once funding has been assured, Auger’s Project will form a collaboration group to build and operate detectors, two 3,000 Km2 repairs, one on southern hemisphere and the other on the northern one. The group expects to be ready to observe air heavy showers of high energy cosmic rays from the new millennium.

TECHNICAL PARTICULARS
OBJECTIVE: determine nature, energy and direction of cosmic ray’s particle’s arrival with energies superior to 1019 eV.
OBSERVATORY TYPE: “hybrid,” consists of a surface net of Cherenkov water detectors and a atmospheric fluorescence telescope system to observe atmospheric falls.
STATISTICS: 60 events per year with energies superior to 1020 eV.
POSITIONING PLACES: Malargüe, Mendoza, Argentina, in the southern hemisphere and Millard County, Utah, USA, northern Hemisphere.
SURFACE DETECTORS: Covered Area: 3,000 km2 per place.
Detector Tanks: 1,600 per place.
Type of detector: Cerenkov radiation detectors in 12,000 liters of purified water, with 3 photomultipliers each.
Distance between detectors: 1.5 km.

FLUORESCENCE TELESCOPES: Amount: 4 per place, total 24 mirrors.

RANGE: 20 km for 1020 eV falls.

MIRRORS: 3.6 m x 3.6 m with 30º x 30º of temperature and 440 photomultiplier tubes each.