NRTA - A Live View of Astronomy

The digital revolution and the connected, ever-growing technical progress have changed science and research fundamentally in the last decades. The versatile possibilities offered by modern computer analysis and simulations have become an indispensable aid for planning, building, and evaluating scientific experiments and for inventing new theories. The research of highly energetic, cosmic radiation, which is hitting relentlessly the atmosphere of the Earth, could benefit greatly from this development. Especially the detection of particles with very high energies (E > 10^19 eV) requires experimental setups featuring tremendous detection volumes, caused by their vanishingly low flux (1 particle per km^2 per century). Instead of a direct observation of the primary particles it is therefore more reasonable to pursue a detection of the particle showers created by the interaction of the primary particles with the molecules of the atmosphere. The fluorescence and Cherenkov photons emitted in this process can be spotted by suitable detectors and allow a reconstruction of energy, direction, and nature of the primary particle. Significant achievements could be made in this field of research thanks to the construction of large-scale, ground-based detector arrays and due to a better understanding of the development of particle showers by performing extensive computer simulations. Yet, the determination of the exact points of origin and of the mechanisms which accelerate cosmic rays remain very problematic. Perturbing interactions of the charged particles on their way to Earth, e.g., the deflection by magnetic fields, pose substantial problems in this area. Moreover it is assumed that the so-called GZK-Effect is the chief cause for the evanescently low flux of cosmic rays in the very high energy regime. It causes a high energy particle to interact with the cosmic microwave background and decays into secondary particles with lower energies. Conclusive confirmation of this theory and further investigation of highly energetic cosmic rays, however, require more high-quality data in this energy range. The JEM-EUSO mission belongs to the next generation of cosmic ray detectors and will push the available detector volume by a remarkable amount. The mission concept follows an approach similar to the ground-based detector arrays and relies on the observation of both fluorescence and Cherenkov signatures produced by air showers. Yet, the JEM-EUSO telescope will be attached to the outer hull of the japanese research module (KIBO) of the International Space Station (ISS) and observe the atmosphere from above. The thus achieved, significantly larger detection volume is expected to improve the chance to detect particles of even the highest energies (E ~ 10^20 eV) by a great amount, hence allowing for a more accurate determination of their origins. Unfortunately, the launch of JEM-EUSO, first planned for 2017, had to be held off indefinitely. Yet, with Mini-EUSO, K-EUSO, and EUSO-SPB, several smaller missions are being prepared for launch in the next years. The experience gained with these projects will also help to finalize the main mission. During the maiden flight of the EUSO-Balloon pathfinder project in Aug. 2014 in Timmins, Canada, prototypes of the JEM-EUSO hardware and the observation strategy were put to the test for the first time. Compared to JEM-EUSO, the considerably smaller focal plane, the low flight altitude, and the short flight duration (< 6 hrs.) made an actual observation of a real particle shower fairly unlikely, even during good weather conditions. For this reason a helicopter, equipped with a UV-laser, circled under the balloon and simulated light pulses which could be spotted by EUSO-Balloon. In the course of the EUSO-Balloon mission, the software tools developed in this work for the conversion, visualization, and (near) real-time analysis of detector raw data could come into operation. Having been programmed specifically with the design and the requirements of the EUSO-Balloon electronics in mind, the tools were already extremely useful during the hardware development phase for low-level testing and calibration of different detector components. In addition, the software helped with monitoring and coordinating tasks during the actual balloon flight and proved a great help especially with sorting and analysing the laser data after the flight had ended. The successful conclusion of the EUSO-Balloon project could prove the proper operation of the detector prototype and the feasibility of the mission concept; furthermore the developed software could be fully tested and worked as intended. The flexible design of the tools allows their easy adaptation to the requirements of the JEM-EUSO main mission, or to further pathfinder missions. Additionally, the whole project served as a descriptive example for the importance of computer based real-time analysis.

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