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Aeronomy & Astrophysics
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Dr. Vladimir Papitashvili
Program Manager
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A-130-S
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NSF/OPP Award 03-37726
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Station:
South Pole Station
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RPSC POC:
Charles Kaminski
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Research Site(s):
South Pole Station
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Dates in Antarctica:
Maintenance in the austral summer, observing in the winter
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AMANDA 2004 (Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array)
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Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA).
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Deploying Team Members:
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Markus Ackermann
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Patrick Simon Peter Berghaus
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Elisa Bernardini
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Dave Besson
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Jim Braun
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Thomas T. Burgess
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Thierry Pierre Alexandre Castermans
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Steve T. Churchwell
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Kenneth Evans
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Kirsten Sabine Goldmann
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Marc Hellwig
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Daan Hubert
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Per Olof Hulth
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Klas Goeran Hultqvist
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Stephan Hundertmark
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Ilya V. Kravchenko
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Johan Lundberg
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Alf Timo Messarius
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Rudy Alan Moore
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Jiwoo Nam
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Philip Olbrechts
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Stefen Schlenstedt
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Andrea Silvestri
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Wolfgang Wagner
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Michael Walter
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Research Objectives:
Neutrinos are elementary particles with no electrical charge and believed to have very little or no mass. Coursing through the universe they interact only rarely with other particles. The sources of neutrino origins could be diffuse, made up of contributions from many active galactic nuclei (ANGI), or they could be point sources of neutrinos coming from supernova remnants (SNRs), rapidly rotating pulsars, neutron stars, individual blazars, or other extragalactic point sources. Recently, new sources of high energy gamma rays have been discovered such as the source Mrk 421, discovered by NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) and Mt. Hopkins Observatory. To date, neutrino astronomy has been limited to the detection of solar neutrinos, plus one brief spectacular burst from the supernova that appeared in the Large Magellanic Cloud in February of 1987 (SN 1987a).
Only now is it becoming technically feasible to build large neutrino telescopes. As one of the first generation detectors, AMANDA promises to make seminal contributions to this branch of neutrino astronomy. AMANDA's primary objective is to discover the sources both within our galaxy, and beyond, of the shower of very high energy neutrinos descending on and usually passing through the earth. AMANDA uses an array of photo multiplier tubes imbedded in the ice near the South Pole, between one and two kilometers deep, to create a Cherenkov detector out of the natural ice. Cherenkov radiation is emitted by collisions of high-energy neutrinos with atoms in the ice.
Over the last six seasons, the project has drilled an array of holes in the ice and suspended over 600 photomultiplier tubes on "strings" inside. The ultratransparent ice at South Pole allows detection of the blue light of Cherenkov radiation from several hundred meters away. There are currently 26 strings, each hard-wired to computers in the Martin A. Pomerantz Observatory (MAPO) facility. The computers analyze the gigabytes of collected data to determine true neutrino events.
This season AMANDA plans a number of electronic upgrades to the existing experiment, VLF noise investigations (VLF Beacon Operations), calibration of the entire instrument, improvements in the supernova Detection System Support of the RICE (Radio detection of Neutrinos). Upgrades to the ICECUBE prototype string of detectors will complete the work on new Transient Waveform (TWR) system experiment.
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