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11 December 2007
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a very large array of detectors in Argentina, with plans for a similar array in the United States. Its aim is the study of the rarest and most energetic particles in the Universe: cosmic rays (most likely protons or bare atomic nuclei) at extremely high energies, whose origins are still a complete mystery despite decades of intense investigations worldwide. These cosmic rays can be studied indirectly by detecting the billions of high-energy particles they produce in interactions with the Earth's atmosphere. These come crashing down through the atmosphere in a cascade, or extensive air shower, that can be detected by counters scattered over a wide area, or else at night by detecting with sensitive telescopes the sky glow (nitrogen fluorescence) they produce in traveling through the atmosphere.
Physicists from 15 countries have been deploying detectors over an area of some 3000 km2 in western Mendoza province, Argentina, to detect these rare air showers (while planning to also deploy a similar array in the Northern Hemisphere in Colorado, USA). To this end, some 1600 surface detectors ("water Cherenkov counters") are being deployed, on a grid with 1.5 km spacing. On hills at the edges of the array, at four different sites, nitrogen fluorescence telescopes are built and operated on dark clear nights, working in coincidence with the ground array. Also near the center of the array are two central laser facilities, used to fire laser shots into the sky at night to calibrate the response of the nitrogen fluorescence detectors. Finally, an observatory campus is located in the town of Malargue, at the edge of the array, with a data acquisition and storage station, office building, and assembly building (where surface detectors are prepared prior to deployment in the field).
Because of the sheer scale of the project, it can be difficult to meaningfully explore the layout of the array and display the various detector components in a way that illustrates the distances involved. To help facilitate this exploration, a model of the Pierre Auger Observatory layout was constructed, to be viewed interactively using Google Earth. This allows the user to display the various detector elements, zoom in on them, tilt and rotate the field of view, etc. Running a Google Earth session requires a computer with reasonably high bandwidth access to the internet. Note that in parts of the map where Google Earth images are available at high resolution, Auger structures are not necessarily visible, depending on whether the Google Earth image (either from a satellite or aerial photo) was taken before or after deployment of the structure. There are currently two options:
Auger Google Earth Model
Download and install Google Earth 4 if you have not already done so (note: the 3D features will not work properly with Google Earth 3 or earlier versions).
Download the Auger South Google Earth model file Pierre_Auger_Observatory_English.kmz and save it to disk. Ignore any attempts by any browser uncompression utility to extract the individual files that comprise this archive. Note that some utility like WinZip might insist that it wants to save the file to Pierre_Auger_Observatory_English.zip instead of .kmz . Force the extension to be .kmz so it will be recognized as a Google Earth object.
Double-click on the downloaded Pierre_Auger_Observatory_English.kmz file to automatically start Google Earth and rotate the Earth and zoom in so as to display the Auger Observatory in the field of view. If doing this does not start Google Earth automatically, you may have to first start the program and load the .kmz file manually. Explore the various controls for navigating around the screen, zooming in and out, tilting the field of view to explore the Observatory. Clicking on any object on the screen will open an information box on the object, with a link to the main Auger Web site.
In the "Places" box to the left of the screen, you can expand or collapse the various folders containing the Auger model elements, such as Surface Detectors, Fluorescence Detectors, Laser Facilities, etc. You can turn on or off the various elements by clicking on the box next to the element name. For example, for the surface detectors, you have the option of turning on the detectors deployed so far, those deployed so far with their name designation, or displaying all default surveyed nominal detector locations (actual detector locations may differ a bit due to terrain conditions at the time of installation) to get a feeling for how the array will look when completed. You can quickly zoom in and rotate the field of view to see any building by double-clicking on the icon next to any building name. Note that the building will only be displayed if the box next to the icon has a check mark in it.
To optimize your Google Earth experience, we recommend enabling the "Terrain", "borders" and "Populated Places" options in the "Layers" window on the left of the screen.
Some screen shots of Google Earth views of the Auger array you can obtain with this model appear below.
Using the same procedure as above, you can download and explore a model of the proposed Northern Pierre Auger Observatory site in Colorado, USA: Pierre_Auger_Observatory_North.kmz.
The Auger Google Earth model has been translated into Spanish, courtesy of Auger collaborator José Bellido. The file is: Observatorio_Pierre_Auger_Espanol.kmz ; this contains the final default positions of all surface detectors, some of which are not yet installed, but also the deployed surface detectors locations, as well as all 3D building models for the observatory.
Ignore any attempts by any browser uncompression utility to extract the individual files that comprise this archive. Note that some utility like WinZip might insist that it wants to save the file to a .zip file instead of .kmz . Force the extension to be .kmz so it will be recognized as a Google Earth object.
Auger Google Earth auf Deutsch
The Auger Google Earth model has been translated into German, courtesy of Auger collaborator Karl-Heinz Kampert. The file is: Pierre_Auger_Observatorium_Deutsch.kmz ; this contains the final default positions of all surface detectors, some of which are not yet installed, but also the deployed surface detectors locations, as well as all 3D building models for the observatory.
Ignore any attempts by any browser uncompression utility to extract the individual files that comprise this archive. Note that some utility like WinZip might insist that it wants to save the file to a .zip file instead of .kmz . Force the extension to be .kmz so it will be recognized as a Google Earth object.
Auger Google Earth in Italiano
The Auger Google Earth model has been translated into Italian, courtesy of Auger collaborator Daniela Maurizio and the students of her Class 4C of the Liceo Scientifico E. Majorana di Moncalieri (Torino). The file is: Osservatorio_Pierre_Auger_Italiano.kmz ; this contains the final default positions of all surface detectors, some of which are not yet installed, but also the deployed surface detectors locations, as well as all 3D building models for the observatory.
Ignore any attempts by any browser uncompression utility to extract the individual files that comprise this archive. Note that some utility like WinZip might insist that it wants to save the file to a .zip file instead of .kmz . Force the extension to be .kmz so it will be recognized as a Google Earth object.
The "tour feature" of Google Earth can be used to quickly and easily view the salient features of the Observatory without the need to master the Google Earth navigation interface. To do this:
Download the list of placemarks to visit defined in the file Auger_tour.kmz . Save it to disk, not decompressing the archive. Load this into Google Earth. Thanks to Auger Collaborator Paul Sommers for putting together an interesting list of placemarks and view points on this tour.
Expand the "Auger tour" folder, and make sure that the folder "Turn this on for tour" is checked.
Click on the "Play tour" subfolder within the "Auger tour" folder in the "Places" window, then click "play" (the little "play" icon at the bottom of the "Places" window). This will automatically go through a sequence of placemarks on a visit of the Observatory without any need to further click on anything.
For best results, we recommend you set the following Google Earth touring options (under the "Tools" pull-down menu):
Fly-to-speed: 0.1000
Tour speed: 0.1000
Tour pause: 2.0 sec
Google Earth-based Event Display
The 3D nature of Google Earth navigation can be used to good advantage in displaying and exploring actual high-energy cosmic-ray events recorded by the Observatory. An example of such an event is shown in the following screenshot:
The hexagonal pyramids represent surface detector stations with activity, where the size/height of each pyramid is an indication of the activity in the corresponding detector. The yellow line is the reconstructed arrival direction in space of the air shower, and the blue and green triangles represent the fields of view of two nitrogen fluorescence detectors that recorded this event simultaneously. This was a stereo hybrid event ("stereo" because two fluorescence detectors recorded the event, "hybrid" because it was seen simultaneously with the fluorescence and surface detectors).
A library of 17 Auger sample hybrid events can be downloaded from the following file: Events.kmz . Ignore any attempts by any browser uncompression utility to extract the individual files that comprise this archive. Note that some utility like WinZip might insist that it wants to save the file to events.zip instead of .kmz . Force the extension to be .kmz so it will be recognized as a Google Earth object.
If you open up the folder "Events" you can select any of the 17 events for display by checking the box next to the event folder name. The event pictured above is event #9. If you open up the folder "GE event 9", say, you can turn on or off the surface detector signals and separately the nitrogen fluorescence detector signals. Note that event #15 was a "triocular" event (3 fluorescence detectors, or "eyes" saw the event simultaneously), while events #16 and #17 were "quadriocular" events (seen by all 4 eyes).
Movies of Google Earth Exploration of Auger
Fairly high resolution (1280x720) movies of a Google Earth based exploration of Auger are now available. The files here are very large (~185 MB), so they are not for the faint of bandwidth. All clips are in Windows Media (.WMV) format.
Movie with musical track: Auger_GE_tourall.wmv .
Movie with commentary in English by Prof. Alan Watson of the University of Leeds (UK): Auger_GE_tour_English.wmv .
Movie with commentary in Spanish by Prof. Ingo Allekotte of the Centro Atomico Bariloche (Argentina) and Prof. Miguel Mostafa of the University of Utah (USA): Auger_GE_tour_Spanish.wmv .
Two additional movies are now available:
Viewing Auger Events in Google Sky
With the newer versions of Google Earth (4.2 and up), it is possible to look up at the night sky instead of down at the Earth. Simply, from the Google Earth window, click on the small icon that looks like a planet above the main window (make sure the toolbar is visible; if not, make it visible from within the "View" menu at the top). In this Google Sky mode, you can now view the arrival directions of the most energetic Auger events (at energies beyond 57 EeV), with a 3.1 degree error circle surrounding each direction. Do this by downloading and opening the file Published_Auger_Events_Sky.kmz (remembering not to let the download utility rename the extension to .zip). You can see nearby Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), flagged by little sun symbols, that correlate well (within 4.8 degrees) with our event arrival directions, and could be sources of the highest-energy cosmic rays. The direction of Centaurus A, the nearest AGN to Earth, is particularly interesting, and layers are part of the model that show radio observations of the Centaurus A object by the Parkes and VLA radio observatories. A screenshot obtained with Google Sky appears below, showing the Centaurus A region.
6 December 2007
A new file of placemarks has been created for the proposed Auger North model in English: Pierre_Auger_Observatory_North.kmz
The bank of deployed surface detector stations in Pierre_Auger_Observatory_English.kmz has been updated to reflect the status of the Observatory as of November 2007. Small graphical improvements have been made (new tank symbols, new Loma Amarilla 3D model, all images are now embedded in the pop-up explanation boxes). The changes have been propagated to the Spanish, German and Italian models as well.
New events seen with 4 fluorescence detectors have been added to the bank of Auger events in 3D.
24 August 2007
A German translation of the Auger Google Earth model files is now available (dank Karl-Heinz Kampert für die Übersetzung!).
Movies of Google Earth explorations of Auger are now available.
1 May 2007
A bank of Auger events in 3D is now available.
17 April 2007
A Spanish translation of the Auger Google Earth model files is now available (gracias a José Bellido por la traducción!).
A "Tour of Auger" is now available, suitable to use in public presentations to describe the Observatory (thanks to Paul Sommers).
Google Earth can now be used to view selected actual Auger events in 3D.
Please send any comments or questions to Stephane Coutu . All 3D model files (done with the free Google SketchUp tool) are available on request.