Operation and performance of a pilot HELYCON cosmic ray telescope with 3 stations

TL;DR

This paper reports on the operation, calibration, and performance analysis of a pilot HELYCON cosmic ray telescope with three stations, demonstrating good agreement with simulations and effective detection of high-energy cosmic rays.

Contribution

It introduces a new autonomous multi-station cosmic ray telescope system and a detailed simulation package, with performance validation over a year and a half of data.

Findings

Angular resolution of 3 to 5 degrees per station

Good agreement between observed data and simulations

Effective detection of cosmic rays with energies above 5 PeV

Abstract

Three autonomous HELYCON stations have been installed, calibrated and operated at the Hellenic Open University campus, detecting cosmic ray air showers. A software package for the detailed simulation of the detectors' response and the stations' operation has been developed. In this work we present the results of the analysis of the data collected by the stations during a period of one year and a half. The performance of the telescope is compared and found in very good agreement with the predictions of the simulation package. The angular resolution of each autonomous station is 3 to 5 degrees depending on the station geometry. In addition, by analyzing data from showers detected synchronously by more than one station, we evaluate the performance of the telescope in detecting very high energy (E > 5PeV) cosmic rays.