The URAGAN wide-aperture large-area muon hodoscope

Large Area Hodoscopes for Muon Diagnostics of Heliosphere and Earth’s Magnetosphere

“…Such detectors must have angular resolution of muon track reconstruction of the order 1 degree and a large sensitive area to provide necessary statistical accuracy of experimental data for all zenith and azimuth angular bins. The possibilities of muon diagnostics were demonstrated by means of the first hodoscopes: the TEMP scintillation muon detector [7] and the URA-GAN hodoscope [4]. Now a new scintillation muon hodoscope with wavelength shifting (WLS) optical fiber light collection is under construction [1].…”

“…However, muon telescopes do not have sufficient resolution to obtain a spatial picture of the disturbance development in the heliosphere. New possibilities in this field are opened by the use of muon hodoscopes [4,7], which allow the solution of this task by methods of muon diagnostics [3,11]. Unfortunately, however, the scheme of cosmic ray application for heliosphere and magnetosphere investigations is not so simple, since the flux of secondary particles at the surface depends not only on the primary cosmic ray flux, but also on the conditions in the atmosphere.…”

Experimental complex for multi-component registration of the EAS in a wide energy range $(10^{15} - 10^{19} eV)$

“…Four SMs of the muon hodoscope URAGAN with total area about 46 m 2 are horizontally deployed above the NEVOD water tank [12,13]. URAGAN is used for detection and analysis of angular variations of muon flux caused by various processes in the heliosphere, magnetosphere and the atmosphere of the Earth.…”

Study of characteristics of Forbush decreases detected in 2006 – 2011 by means of muon hodoscope URAGAN

“…Construction and data acquisition system of muon hodoscope URAGAN [1] allow to register nearly continuous zenith-azimuthal dependence of muon flux on the Earth surface with a sufficiently small sampling interval of time. Every minute one supermodule (SM) of muon hodoscope URAGAN registers and writes in a two-dimensional matrix (in the cells of zenith and azimuth angles) information about ~ 80 thousand muons which represent original material for a further analysis.…”

“…Construction in 2006 of a wide-aperture precise muon hodoscope [1] which provides continuous registration of muon flux from all directions of the celestial hemisphere has allowed a new level studying of cosmic ray (CR) variations, which are the integral result of various solar, heliospheric, magnetospheric and atmospheric phenomena. Forbush decrease (FD) is one of the bright examples of occasional cosmic ray variations, which represents a sharp decrease of cosmic ray intensity caused by disturbances in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) connected with shocks in the solar wind [2].…”