<p>Elves are the most common type of transient luminous events, with estima... more <p>Elves are the most common type of transient luminous events, with estimates of their global occurrence rate ranging from a few to a few tens per minute. Here, we present the first derivation of the global occurrence rate of elves from Mini-EUSO observations. Mini-EUSO is a wide field of view, space-based telescope operating from a nadir-facing UV-transparent window in the Russian Zvezda module on the International Space Station. It observes the Earth’s atmosphere in the UV band with a spatial resolution of about 6.3 km and a temporal resolution of 2.5 μs. Its optical system made of two 25 cm diameter Fresnel lenses focuses the light into a square array of 48x48 pixels, each pixel being capable of single photon counting. Originally designed to detect the faint fluorescence light produced by extensive air showers induced by extreme energy cosmic rays, it was shown to be capable of detecting a wide range of atmospheric phenomena, including elves. Elves are dynamically traced by Mini-EUSO in their horizontally expanding, fast donut-shaped light emissions and can therefore be unequivocally identified. Mini-EUSO can usually detect elves whose center is just outside the field of view, following the expansion of the ring for hundreds of microseconds. Combining the number of detected elves with consideration of the time and geometries, it is possible to derive a first estimate of their global occurrence rate with Mini-EUSO, and to compare it to the literature. </p>
<p>Mini-EUSO is a telescope that observes the Earth from the International ... more <p>Mini-EUSO is a telescope that observes the Earth from the International Space Station by recording ultraviolet emissions (290 ÷ 430 nm) of cosmic, atmospheric and terrestrial origin with a field of view of 44◦, a spatial resolution of 6.3 km and a temporal resolution of 2.5 mus.</p><p>The instrument is based on an optical system composed of two Fresnel lenses and a focal surface composed of 36 multi-anode photomultiplier tubes, 64 channels each, for a total of 2304 channels with single photon counting sensitivity.</p><p>Mini-EUSO is a UV telescope launched in 2019   and observing the Earth from the inside the Russian Zvezda module, through a nadir-facing UV-transparent.</p><p>It is composed of a Fresnel optics (25 cm diameter, 44 deg field of view) and a Multi Anode Photomultiplier focal surface (2304 pixels, 6km on the surface) with a single-photon counting capability and a sampling rate of 400kHz.</p><p>Its scientific objectives include the search for ultra-high energy cosmic rays (E>1e21eV), the study of  meteors and search for interstellar objects and Strange Quark Matter, the  mapping   of the Earth's night-time ultraviolet emissions, the search for space debris.</p><p>The characteristcs of the detector make it also well suited for the detection of TLEs, especially ELVES and the study of its development to extract spatial and temporal evolution.  In this article we will focus our attention on the observation of single and multi-ringed elves.</p>
<p&amp... more <p>The search for the physical mechanisms of lightning, transient luminous events and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes is receiving an extraordinary support by new space observations that have recently become available. Next to lightning detectors on geostationary satellites, new low orbit experiments are giving an unprecedented insight in the very source of these processes. Looking at the physics behind these new observations requires however to have a variety of different instruments covering the same event, and this is proving extremely challenging. Here, we present observations of UV emissions of elves and lightning taken for the first time simultaneously from the two instruments Mini-EUSO and ASIM operating on the international space station. Mini-EUSO was designed to perform observations of the UV-light night emission from Earth. It is a wide field of view telescope (44°x44° square FOV) installed for the first time on October 2019 inside the Zvezda Module of the ISS, looking nadir through a UV transparent window. Its optical system consists of two Fresnel lenses for light collection. The light is focused onto an array of 36 multi-anode photomultiplier tubes (MAPMT), for a total of 2304 pixels. Each pixel has a footprint on ground of ~5.5 km. The instrument is capable of single-photon counting on three different timescales: a 2.5 microsecond (D1) and a 320 microsecond (D2) timescale with a dedicated trigger system, and a 40.96ms timescale (D3) used to produce a continuous monitoring of the UV emission from the Earth. ASIM is an experiment dedicated to lightning and atmospheric processes. Its Modular Multispectral Imaging Array (MMIA) is made of an array of 3 high speed photometers probing different wavelength sampling at rates up to 100 kHz, and 2 Electron Multiplication Charge Coupled Devices (EM-CCDs) with a sub-km spatial resolution with an 80° FOV and recording up to 12 frames per second. Mini-EUSO detected several bright atmospheric events like lightning and elves, with a few km spatial resolution and different time resolutions, probing therefore different stages of the electromagnetic phenomena. Observations from Mini-EUSO were simultaneously captured by ASIM instruments, allowing for the first time to compare and complement the capabilities of the two instruments with a time inter-calibration based on unambiguous series of lightning detections.</p>
<p>During its first six months of operations onboard the Zv... more <p>During its first six months of operations onboard the Zvezda module of the International Space Station, the Mini-EUSO wide-field telescope detected more than two thousand meteors in approximately 40 hours of data taking. Mini-EUSO observes the Earth’s atmosphere in the UV range (290 – 430 nm) with a field of view of about 44° x 44° through a nadir-facing, UV-transparent window with a focal surface of 48 x 48 pixels and a resolution of about 6.3 km on ground. While temporal resolution and triggering are at the timescales of 2.5 μs to potentially record UHECR showers and TLEs, Mini-EUSO performs a continuous monitoring of the UV emission at a 40.96 ms timescale, where meteors are recorded. We developed an analysis pipeline able to offline detect, track and characterize meteor events and subsequently compute their physical parameters, such as tangential speed, magnitude, duration and trajectory azimuth. In this contribution, we present the implemented reduction methods and the results of the analysis of the sample, providing comparisons with existing databases of meteors observed in the optical band.</p>
Mini-EUSO is the first detector of the JEM-EUSO program deployed on the ISS. It is a wide field o... more Mini-EUSO is the first detector of the JEM-EUSO program deployed on the ISS. It is a wide field of view telescope currently operating from a nadir-facing UV-transparent window on the ISS. It is based on an array of MAPMTs working in photon counting mode with a 2.5 μs time resolution. Among the different scientific objectives it searches for light signals with time duration compatible to those expected from Extensive Air Showers (EAS) generated by EECRs interacting in the atmosphere. Although the energy threshold for cosmic ray showers is above E>10^21 eV, due the constraints given by the size of the UV-transparent window, the dedicated trigger logic has been capable of the detection of other interesting classes of events, like elves and ground flashers. An overview of the general performance of the trigger system is provided, with a particular focus on the identification of classes of events responsible for the triggers.
Mini-EUSO is part of the JEM-EUSO program and operates on board the International Space Station (... more Mini-EUSO is part of the JEM-EUSO program and operates on board the International Space Station (ISS). It is a UV-telescope with single-photon counting capability looking at nighttime downwards to the Earth through a nadir-facing UV-transparent window. As part of the pre-flight tests, the Mini-EUSO engineering model, a telescope with 1/9 of the original focal surface and a lens of 2.5 cm diameter, has been built and tested. Tests of the Mini-EUSO engineering model have been made in laboratory and in open-sky conditions. Laboratory tests have been performed at the TurLab facility, located at the Physics Department of the University of Turin, equipped with a rotating tank containing different types of materials and light sources. In this way, the configuration for the observation of the Earth from space was emulated, including the Mini-EUSO trigger schemes. In addition to the qualification and calibration tests, the Mini-EUSO engineering model has also been used to evaluate the possib...
K-EUSO (KLYPVE-EUSO) is a planned orbital mission aimed at studying ultra-high energy cosmic rays... more K-EUSO (KLYPVE-EUSO) is a planned orbital mission aimed at studying ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) by detecting fluorescence and Cherenkov light emitted by extensive air showers in the nocturnal atmosphere of Earth in the ultraviolet (UV) range. The observatory is being developed within the JEM-EUSO collaboration and is planned to be deployed on the International Space Station after 2025 and operated for at least two years. The telescope, consisting of ∼105 independent pixels, will allow a spatial resolution of ∼0.6 km on the ground, and, from a 400 km altitude, it will achieve a large and full sky exposure to sample the highest energy range of the UHECR spectrum. We provide a comprehensive review of the current status of the development of the K-EUSO experiment, paying special attention to its hardware parts and expected performance. We demonstrate how results of the K-EUSO mission can complement the achievements of the existing ground-based experiments and push forward the...
National Centre for Nuclear Research, Lodz, Poland KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, ... more National Centre for Nuclear Research, Lodz, Poland KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare – Sezione di Torino, Turin, Italy Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica – Osservatorio astrofisico di Torino, Turin, Italy Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Torino, Turin, Italy 5 Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare – Sezione di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy Universitá degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata – Dipartimento di Fisica, Rome, Italy RIKEN, Wako, Japan Colorado School of Mines, Golden, USA University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland E-mail: kenji.shinozaki@ncbj.gov.pl
The Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) is designed to identify the sources of... more The Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) is designed to identify the sources of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) and to observe cosmic neutrinos, both with full-sky coverage. Developed as a NASA Astrophysics Probe-class mission, POEMMA consists of two spacecraft flying in a loose formation at 525 km altitude, 28.5 deg inclination orbits. Each spacecraft hosts a Schmidt telescope with a large collecting area and wide field of view. A novel focal plane is optimized to observe both the UV fluorescence signal from extensive air showers (EASs) and the beamed optical Cherenkov signals from EASs. In POEMMA-stereo fluorescence mode, POEMMA will measure the spectrum, composition, and full-sky distribution of the UHECRs above 20 EeV with high statistics along with remarkable sensitivity to UHE neutrinos. The spacecraft are designed to quickly re-orient to a POEMMA-limb mode to observe neutrino emission from Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) transient astrophysical sources vi...
<p>Elves are the most common type of transient luminous events, with estima... more <p>Elves are the most common type of transient luminous events, with estimates of their global occurrence rate ranging from a few to a few tens per minute. Here, we present the first derivation of the global occurrence rate of elves from Mini-EUSO observations. Mini-EUSO is a wide field of view, space-based telescope operating from a nadir-facing UV-transparent window in the Russian Zvezda module on the International Space Station. It observes the Earth’s atmosphere in the UV band with a spatial resolution of about 6.3 km and a temporal resolution of 2.5 μs. Its optical system made of two 25 cm diameter Fresnel lenses focuses the light into a square array of 48x48 pixels, each pixel being capable of single photon counting. Originally designed to detect the faint fluorescence light produced by extensive air showers induced by extreme energy cosmic rays, it was shown to be capable of detecting a wide range of atmospheric phenomena, including elves. Elves are dynamically traced by Mini-EUSO in their horizontally expanding, fast donut-shaped light emissions and can therefore be unequivocally identified. Mini-EUSO can usually detect elves whose center is just outside the field of view, following the expansion of the ring for hundreds of microseconds. Combining the number of detected elves with consideration of the time and geometries, it is possible to derive a first estimate of their global occurrence rate with Mini-EUSO, and to compare it to the literature. </p>
<p>Mini-EUSO is a telescope that observes the Earth from the International ... more <p>Mini-EUSO is a telescope that observes the Earth from the International Space Station by recording ultraviolet emissions (290 ÷ 430 nm) of cosmic, atmospheric and terrestrial origin with a field of view of 44◦, a spatial resolution of 6.3 km and a temporal resolution of 2.5 mus.</p><p>The instrument is based on an optical system composed of two Fresnel lenses and a focal surface composed of 36 multi-anode photomultiplier tubes, 64 channels each, for a total of 2304 channels with single photon counting sensitivity.</p><p>Mini-EUSO is a UV telescope launched in 2019   and observing the Earth from the inside the Russian Zvezda module, through a nadir-facing UV-transparent.</p><p>It is composed of a Fresnel optics (25 cm diameter, 44 deg field of view) and a Multi Anode Photomultiplier focal surface (2304 pixels, 6km on the surface) with a single-photon counting capability and a sampling rate of 400kHz.</p><p>Its scientific objectives include the search for ultra-high energy cosmic rays (E>1e21eV), the study of  meteors and search for interstellar objects and Strange Quark Matter, the  mapping   of the Earth's night-time ultraviolet emissions, the search for space debris.</p><p>The characteristcs of the detector make it also well suited for the detection of TLEs, especially ELVES and the study of its development to extract spatial and temporal evolution.  In this article we will focus our attention on the observation of single and multi-ringed elves.</p>
<p&amp... more <p>The search for the physical mechanisms of lightning, transient luminous events and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes is receiving an extraordinary support by new space observations that have recently become available. Next to lightning detectors on geostationary satellites, new low orbit experiments are giving an unprecedented insight in the very source of these processes. Looking at the physics behind these new observations requires however to have a variety of different instruments covering the same event, and this is proving extremely challenging. Here, we present observations of UV emissions of elves and lightning taken for the first time simultaneously from the two instruments Mini-EUSO and ASIM operating on the international space station. Mini-EUSO was designed to perform observations of the UV-light night emission from Earth. It is a wide field of view telescope (44°x44° square FOV) installed for the first time on October 2019 inside the Zvezda Module of the ISS, looking nadir through a UV transparent window. Its optical system consists of two Fresnel lenses for light collection. The light is focused onto an array of 36 multi-anode photomultiplier tubes (MAPMT), for a total of 2304 pixels. Each pixel has a footprint on ground of ~5.5 km. The instrument is capable of single-photon counting on three different timescales: a 2.5 microsecond (D1) and a 320 microsecond (D2) timescale with a dedicated trigger system, and a 40.96ms timescale (D3) used to produce a continuous monitoring of the UV emission from the Earth. ASIM is an experiment dedicated to lightning and atmospheric processes. Its Modular Multispectral Imaging Array (MMIA) is made of an array of 3 high speed photometers probing different wavelength sampling at rates up to 100 kHz, and 2 Electron Multiplication Charge Coupled Devices (EM-CCDs) with a sub-km spatial resolution with an 80° FOV and recording up to 12 frames per second. Mini-EUSO detected several bright atmospheric events like lightning and elves, with a few km spatial resolution and different time resolutions, probing therefore different stages of the electromagnetic phenomena. Observations from Mini-EUSO were simultaneously captured by ASIM instruments, allowing for the first time to compare and complement the capabilities of the two instruments with a time inter-calibration based on unambiguous series of lightning detections.</p>
<p>During its first six months of operations onboard the Zv... more <p>During its first six months of operations onboard the Zvezda module of the International Space Station, the Mini-EUSO wide-field telescope detected more than two thousand meteors in approximately 40 hours of data taking. Mini-EUSO observes the Earth’s atmosphere in the UV range (290 – 430 nm) with a field of view of about 44° x 44° through a nadir-facing, UV-transparent window with a focal surface of 48 x 48 pixels and a resolution of about 6.3 km on ground. While temporal resolution and triggering are at the timescales of 2.5 μs to potentially record UHECR showers and TLEs, Mini-EUSO performs a continuous monitoring of the UV emission at a 40.96 ms timescale, where meteors are recorded. We developed an analysis pipeline able to offline detect, track and characterize meteor events and subsequently compute their physical parameters, such as tangential speed, magnitude, duration and trajectory azimuth. In this contribution, we present the implemented reduction methods and the results of the analysis of the sample, providing comparisons with existing databases of meteors observed in the optical band.</p>
Mini-EUSO is the first detector of the JEM-EUSO program deployed on the ISS. It is a wide field o... more Mini-EUSO is the first detector of the JEM-EUSO program deployed on the ISS. It is a wide field of view telescope currently operating from a nadir-facing UV-transparent window on the ISS. It is based on an array of MAPMTs working in photon counting mode with a 2.5 μs time resolution. Among the different scientific objectives it searches for light signals with time duration compatible to those expected from Extensive Air Showers (EAS) generated by EECRs interacting in the atmosphere. Although the energy threshold for cosmic ray showers is above E>10^21 eV, due the constraints given by the size of the UV-transparent window, the dedicated trigger logic has been capable of the detection of other interesting classes of events, like elves and ground flashers. An overview of the general performance of the trigger system is provided, with a particular focus on the identification of classes of events responsible for the triggers.
Mini-EUSO is part of the JEM-EUSO program and operates on board the International Space Station (... more Mini-EUSO is part of the JEM-EUSO program and operates on board the International Space Station (ISS). It is a UV-telescope with single-photon counting capability looking at nighttime downwards to the Earth through a nadir-facing UV-transparent window. As part of the pre-flight tests, the Mini-EUSO engineering model, a telescope with 1/9 of the original focal surface and a lens of 2.5 cm diameter, has been built and tested. Tests of the Mini-EUSO engineering model have been made in laboratory and in open-sky conditions. Laboratory tests have been performed at the TurLab facility, located at the Physics Department of the University of Turin, equipped with a rotating tank containing different types of materials and light sources. In this way, the configuration for the observation of the Earth from space was emulated, including the Mini-EUSO trigger schemes. In addition to the qualification and calibration tests, the Mini-EUSO engineering model has also been used to evaluate the possib...
K-EUSO (KLYPVE-EUSO) is a planned orbital mission aimed at studying ultra-high energy cosmic rays... more K-EUSO (KLYPVE-EUSO) is a planned orbital mission aimed at studying ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) by detecting fluorescence and Cherenkov light emitted by extensive air showers in the nocturnal atmosphere of Earth in the ultraviolet (UV) range. The observatory is being developed within the JEM-EUSO collaboration and is planned to be deployed on the International Space Station after 2025 and operated for at least two years. The telescope, consisting of ∼105 independent pixels, will allow a spatial resolution of ∼0.6 km on the ground, and, from a 400 km altitude, it will achieve a large and full sky exposure to sample the highest energy range of the UHECR spectrum. We provide a comprehensive review of the current status of the development of the K-EUSO experiment, paying special attention to its hardware parts and expected performance. We demonstrate how results of the K-EUSO mission can complement the achievements of the existing ground-based experiments and push forward the...
National Centre for Nuclear Research, Lodz, Poland KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, ... more National Centre for Nuclear Research, Lodz, Poland KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare – Sezione di Torino, Turin, Italy Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica – Osservatorio astrofisico di Torino, Turin, Italy Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Torino, Turin, Italy 5 Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare – Sezione di Roma Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy Universitá degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata – Dipartimento di Fisica, Rome, Italy RIKEN, Wako, Japan Colorado School of Mines, Golden, USA University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland E-mail: kenji.shinozaki@ncbj.gov.pl
The Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) is designed to identify the sources of... more The Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) is designed to identify the sources of Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) and to observe cosmic neutrinos, both with full-sky coverage. Developed as a NASA Astrophysics Probe-class mission, POEMMA consists of two spacecraft flying in a loose formation at 525 km altitude, 28.5 deg inclination orbits. Each spacecraft hosts a Schmidt telescope with a large collecting area and wide field of view. A novel focal plane is optimized to observe both the UV fluorescence signal from extensive air showers (EASs) and the beamed optical Cherenkov signals from EASs. In POEMMA-stereo fluorescence mode, POEMMA will measure the spectrum, composition, and full-sky distribution of the UHECRs above 20 EeV with high statistics along with remarkable sensitivity to UHE neutrinos. The spacecraft are designed to quickly re-orient to a POEMMA-limb mode to observe neutrino emission from Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) transient astrophysical sources vi...
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