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Neumayer Station III
Neumayer Station III
The German research station Neumayer III installed and operated since 2009 by the Alfred-Wegener-Institut is located at the Antarctic ice shelf. The main research fields are geophysics, meteorology and air chemistry.
Since the Earth's magnetosphere guides charged low energy particles to the poles, these areas are characterised by spectacular polar lights in the atmosphere and an increased particle rate at ground level. In 2012 a muon counter experiment and a mini neutron monitor, identical to those on the Polarstern, have been installed at Neumayer III to measure the rates of cosmic particles.
The low-energy component of cosmic rays comes mainly from the sun and can be easily measured with a neutron monitor. Therefore it is interesting to search for a correlation of solar events and particle rate in both experiments. The variation of cosmic particle activity during the 11 year solar cycle can also be observed.
Muon Detector Setup
- two scintillation counters mounted at a vertical distance of 40 cm,
- a DAQ card (originally designed and produced for the Fermilab QuarkNet experiment),
- a notebook on which a python script analyses and stores the data so that a packed data file can be transmitted to DESY per email once a day.
The experiment measures muons, which are decay products of particles generated by the interaction of primary cosmic particles with atoms of the atmosphere. The muons are detected using two scintillator plates similar to the CosMO Experiment.
The two 25x25 cm2 detectors are each read by two PMTs. Only if both PMTs in both scintillators show a signal at the same time, the event will be accepted as a traversing muon. This coincidence condition ensures the reduction of false signals.
The setup consists of the following components:
Mini Neutron Monitor Setup
- the neutron detector,
- an electronics box for the data acquisition,
- a notebook to control the settings for the data taking and for the data storage and transfer.
Neutron monitors measure the nuclear component of cosmic particles reaching the Earth's surface. A detailed description of neutron monitors and how they work is given in the glossary.
The North-West University of Pochefstroom (South Africa) has developed a light, portable version consisting of the following components:
Data Structure
Possible Student Exercises
Example Diagrams
- What can be concluded from this diagram?
- Therefore, several conclusions can be drawn from this diagram. What are these?
At Cosmic@Web some example diagrams can be found using the Session-ID Neumayer.
This xy diagram shows the temporal progression of the particle rate measured by two different experiments
at Neumayer Station III from 2013 to 2016. The measurements of the scintillation counter are shown in
orange and those of the neutron monitor in blue.
The exact settings can be found on the session ID Neumayer.
2D Diagram Particle Rate versus Atmospheric Pressure
This 2D histogram shows how often which rate was measured at which atmospheric pressure.
Certain ranges, so-called bins, are defined in which the individual measuring points are counted. In the area of a dark blue box, for example, there are 1 to 100 measuring points, in that of a dark red box up to 500. The exact settings can be found on the Session-ID Neumayer.
The relation between the rate of cosmic particles and the atmospheric pressure is read off as in an xy diagram; additionally the frequency is indicated by the colour scale.
