The MEV project: design and testing of a new high-resolution telescope for Muography of Etna Volcano

TL;DR

The MEV project developed and tested a high-resolution muon telescope for volcano muography, successfully capturing data from Etna's summit crater to improve imaging of volcanic structures.

Contribution

This work presents the design, construction, and testing of a novel high-resolution muon telescope specifically tailored for volcanic muography applications.

Findings

Successful deployment and testing of the telescope in a volcanic environment

Achieved angular resolution of less than 0.4 milliradians

Collected 120 days of muography data from Etna's summit crater

Abstract

The MEV project aims at developing a muon telescope expressly designed for the muography of Etna Volcano. In particular, one of the active craters in the summit area of the volcano would be a suitable target for this experiment. A muon tracking telescope with high imaging resolution was built and tested during 2017. The telescope is a tracker based on extruded scintillating bars with WLS fibres and featuring an innovative read-out architecture. It is composed of three XY planes with a sensitive area of \SI{1}{m^2}; the angular resolution does not exceeds \SI{0.4}{\milli\steradian} and the total angular aperture is about $\pm$\SI{45}{\degree}. A special effort concerned the design of mechanics and electronics in order to meet the requirements of a detector capable to work in a hostile environment such as the top of a tall volcano, at a far distance from any facility. The test phase started in January 2017 and ended successfully at the end of July 2017. An extinct volcanic crater (the Monti Rossi, in the village of Nicolosi, about 15km from Catania) is the target of the measurement. The detector acquired data for about 120 days and the preliminary results are reported in this work.