Relevant and Irrelevant

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	RELEVANT and IRRELEVANT (to “Introduction to Cosmic Rays”)


		Content:

I.		Scientific animations Animated sun Animated supernovae Cosmic ray acceleration and propagation in cosmos Extensive air showers Ultra high energy cosmic rays Events recorded in the AMANDA Neutrino Telescope
II.		Online textbooks and lessons in cosmic rays and related subjects
III.		Additional links

I. SCIENTIFIC ANIMATIONS

Here you may look through and download animated pictures and movies
some of which were demonstrated during the lectures.

Animated Sun


Sunspot (from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

	Sunspots appear dark because they are cooler than the solar surface; they can be as large as 80,000 km (over 6 planet Earths). Click on image to open the animation in new window [mpg format, 2.82 MB]

How do active regions form? (from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

	Peering beneath the surface of AR 9393 revealed regions comprised of many small magnetic structures that rise quickly from deep within the Sun. Click on image to open the animation in new window [mov format, 11.7 MB]

The sun in “white light” (from Stanford Solar Center)

	A collection of solar "white light" images from April-May 2003, strung together in an animation. The Sun has artificially been colored orange. Click on image to enlarge the animated image in new window [gif format, 1.13 MB]

Magnetic activity in the Sun's corona (from the Space Weather Project, La Trobe University)

	The most prominent features of the magnetic activity of the Sun's corona are usually the coronal streamers, nearly radial bands streaming outward. The image shows an extraordinary powerful solar flare (12/09/2000). Click on image to enlarge the it in new window [gif format, 594 KB] The real-time movie of the most recent 48 hours of solar activity can be seen in Space.com. The picture is updated every hour if satellite communications permit.

The Day the Solar Wind Disappeared (from Views of the Solar System by Calvin J. Hamilton)

	As the solar wind dissipates on May 11, 1999, the magnetosphere and bow shock around Earth expand to five times their normal size. The aurora, which usually forms ovals around Earth's poles, fills in over the northern polar cap. Click on image to open the animation in new window [mov format, 9.32 MB]

For an exceptional collection of animated pictures of Cosmos visit the official NASA home page

and, in particular, the following page of the NASA Goddard Center

Animated Supernovae


A supernova explosion (artist's concept) (from NASA HubblSite)

	There is an initial flash of light from the supernova explosion causing the ring to glow. Debris hurls into space, the fastest moving at 0.1c. The supernova's shockwave causes the ring to glow again. Click on image to open the movie in new window [mov format, 2.56 MB] The closer the pieces of the ring are to the shockwave, the sooner they light up. Eventually, the whole ring lights up.

Supernova 1987A: how the rings are oriented towards Earth (from NASA HubblSite)

	Click on image to open the movie in new window [mov format, 4.12 MB]
	[mpg format, 1.24 MB]

Supernova 1987A: how the rings are oriented towards Earth (from Chandra X-ray Observatory; see also homepage of Tom Michalik, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, for more explanations and more images)

	The X-ray image shows tilted rings or waves of high-energy particles that appear to have been flung outward over the distance of a light year from the central star, and high-energy jets of particles blasting away from the neutron star in a direction perpendicular to the spiral. It provides important clues to the puzzle of how the cosmic “generator,” a pulsing neutron star, energizes the nebula, which still glows brightly almost 1,000 years after the explosion. Click on image to open the movie in new window [mpeg format, 2.37 MB] According to Martin Weisskopf (NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center), “The Crab pulsar is accelerating particles up to the speed of light and flinging them out into interstellar space at an incredible rate.”

	A list of real optical supernova images collected by David Bishop, International Supernovae Network

Cosmic ray acceleration and propagation in cosmos


Simulations of Cosmic Rays from GRBs in the Galaxy (by Chuck D. Dermer and Jeremy M. Holmes, U.S. Naval Research Lab)

	CR halo formed 12,000 years after a gamma-ray burst that took place at 3 kpc at the center of the Galaxy. Legend: CR protons with Lorentz factors in the ranges 10^7-8, 10^8-9, 10^9-10, and 10^10-11 are red, green, turquoise, and purple, respectively. CR neutrons and neutron-decay protons are dark red, yellow, magenta, and dark blue in the respective energy ranges. Click on image to open the animation in new window [gif format, 2.71 MB] More figures can be found here. The physics is explained in the recent paper of Dermer and Holmes, *“Cosmic rays from gamma-ray bursts in the Galaxy,”* Astrophys. J. 628 (2005) L21-L24 [astro-ph/0504158].

Extensive air showers


An extensive air shower in the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory Engineering Array (from Pierre Auger homepage)

	This is an artist's view of an oblique EAS. The shower particles travel at essentially the speed of light. They spread out from the shower axis in a thin “shower front.” You can see curvature in the shape of this front. The moving rectangle is the “shower plane” that is tangent to the shower front at the shower axis. Click on image to open the animation in new window [gif format, 8.84 MB] Green dots represent electrons and positrons. Red dots represent muons. Notice that the light detected in a water tank station depends on its distance from the shower axis. The tank closest to the core gets a much stronger signal than those that are far from the axis. The arrival direction is calculated from the shower front arrival times at the different water tank detectors.

CORSIKA simulated air shower initiated by a 100 TeV iron nucleus (by J. Oehlschläger and Ralf Engel, Institut für Kernphysik, Forschungszentrum, Karlsruhe)

	This is only one example from a series of animated extensive air shower images collected in the webpage for the popular Air Shower Simulation Program CORSIKA. Click on image to open the animation in new window [gif format, 8.38 MB] The physics and relevant references can be found just in the CORSIKA page.

CORSIKA simulated air shower initiated by a 2 TeV proton (by Miguel F. Morales, University of California)

	This is only one example from a series of animated extensive air shower images collected in the Milagro Animations web site. Click on image to open the animation in new window [mov format, 8.33 MB] The physics is explained in this write-up [M.F. Morales, “Computer animation of extensive air showers interacting with the Milagro water Cherenkov detector,” in Proc. of the 6th GeV-TeV Gamma Ray Astrophysics Workshop “Toward a Major Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescope," Snowbird, Utah, August 13-16, 1999, edited by B.L. Dingus et al.; AIP Conf. Proc. 515 (2000) 448-452.]

AIRES Cosmic Ray Showers (by Maximo Ave, Dinoj Surendran, Tokonatsu Yamamoto, Randy Landsberg, and Mark SubbaRao)

	The authors created visualizations of CR showers by using Sergio Sciutto's AIRES package. The AIRES source code was modified so it output intermediate particle positions, and these were then processed with a Perl script to Partiview format. The webpage has downloads of several showers, and documentation. The showers work in Linux and Windows, and in side-by-side stereo. From this page you may start a stroll through the COSMUS, an “Open Source Science Outreach,” and then through many other interesting astrophysical sites.

Ultra high energy cosmic rays


The mystery of ultra high energy cosmic rays (from the ASPIRE, Astrophysics Science Project Integrating Research and Education)

	An interesting 22 min. movie (talkie) “for pedestrians” by HiRes, Utah (resolution is far from excellent) Click on image to download the movie from the ASPIRE webpage.

Deployment of EUSO Telescope on the ISS (by Toshiyuki Takahei, RIKEN)

	Click on image to open the movie in new window [mpeg format, 20.0 MB]

Z-burst (by Lada Kirich)

	Z-bursts resulting from the resonant annihilation of ultrahigh-energy cosmic neutrinos on relic antineutrinos are among proposed wittily explanations of the UHECR puzzle. Unfortunately, this solution has the same drawback as the explanation of the origin of life by panspermia… Click on image to enlarge it in new window [gif format, 358 KB]

Events recorded in the AMANDA Neutrino Telescope
(from the AMANDA Wisconsin homepage)




# 009377_3d2	# 910225_y	# 5362470_y
			Click on any image to animate the event in new window [gif format, from 43 to 190 KB]
# 021328_y	# 1222689_y	# 7492181_y

# 736486_y	# 3911386_y	# 10604848_y

For more details jump to

II. ONLINE TEXTBOOKS AND LESSONS IN COSMIC RAYS & RELATED SUBJECTS


	“Oulu Space Physics Textbook”. See also WWW Virtual Library: “Aeronomy, Solar-Terrestrial Physics & Chemistry”. This page includes many CR relevant educational links.

	Lecturing course of “Heliospheric Physics and Cosmic Rays” by Kalevi Mursula and Ilya Usoskin, University of Oulu

	“Die kosmische Strahlung als Fenster zum Universum” A popular essay by Christoph Boden (in German)

Virtual labs, Teacher pages, and so on [requires Java]

III. ADDITIONAL LINKS


	Pointers to various cosmic-ray and neutrino experiments worldwide a collection of links maintained by Konrad Bernlöhr (MPI, Heidelberg)

	“Neutrino Unbound” a literature resource maintained by Carlo Giunti (INFN, Turin & Turin University) and Marco Laveder (Padua University). This useful addendum to SPIRES provides information on experimental and theoretical work in neutrino physics and astrophysics with special attention to neutrino oscillations, direct detection of neutrino masses and neutrinoless double-beta decay. Among others, includes many cosmic-ray related links.

This is only one example from a series of animated extensive air shower images collected in the webpage for the popular Air Shower Simulation Program CORSIKA.