1 of 18

1

New Masterclass activity with the public data of the Pierre Auger Observatory

​

​

​

​

IPPOG Masterclasses steering group meeting

CERN, October 26, 2022

Raul Sarmento

raul@lip.pt

2 of 18

2

Pierre Auger Observatory

outreach

​

  • Visitor’s centre at Malargue
  • Science Fair
  • Outreach webpage
  • Social networks

https://labdpr.cab.cnea.gov.ar/ED/

3 of 18

3

Auger Open Data

opendata.auger.org

​

  • 2021 public release of 10% of the observatory data
  • Pseudo-raw and reconstructed data in JSON format
  • Several educational, analysis and visualization tools

4 of 18

4

Auger Open Data

opendata.auger.org

​

  • Analysis notebooks based on python, run on kaggle

5 of 18

5

Auger Masterclass

concept

  • Question: What is the origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays?

​

  • Experimental procedure:
    • reconstruct the arrival direction and energy of real Auger events + perform event selection
    • a sky map with the reconstructed arrival directions of selected events is produced and discussed

6 of 18

6

Auger Masterclass

experimental activity

Student starting point

Surface Detector stations time and signal only

7 of 18

7

Auger Masterclass

experimental activity

Reconstructed event

energy

arrival

direction

8 of 18

8

9 of 18

9

Auger Masterclass

comments

  • Except for the shower core (technical reasons), all information used is that resulting from the student’s action

​

  • Each next step of the event reconstruction includes results obtained by the student in previous steps

10 of 18

10

Auger Masterclass

discussion of the results

example result from one student

11 of 18

11

Auger Masterclass

discussion of the results

  1. sky-map coordinates

combining statistics of from all students

2) observatory exposure to the sky

3) count maps of arrival directions

4) smoothed flux map

12 of 18

12

Auger Masterclass

international pilot test

  • 9th of May, 2022
  • 80 high-school students from 6 cities of Portugal (Braga, Coimbra, Lisbon) and Italy (L’Aquila, Lecce, Naples)

13 of 18

13

Pilot test

students performance

  • 667 reconstructed events that matched the selection criteria
  • By eye, same pattern as Auger’s

14 of 18

14

Pilot test

some lessons

  • All groups submitted their results!
  • Generally, event reconstruction and selection worked very well
  • A few events with bias in reconstructed azimuth angle; easily avoidable
  • About 14 selected events per student (from a total of 2500 total): reference for scalability and dataset adjustment according to number of participants

15 of 18

15

Status and outlook

materials

  • Webpage with entries for masterclass events, software, datasets and results upload platform

  • Students guides (portuguese, italian, english translation on-going)

​

  • Template slides for introduction and discussion (portuguese)

16 of 18

16

Status and outlook

next steps

  • To reach students worldwide by proposing the activity to the IPPOG program of international masterclasses

​

  • Auger Outreach Task makes formal proposal to the Auger Collaboration at the November meeting

​

  • Translations, additional documentation, integration as requested

17 of 18

17

Thanks for the attention!

raul@lip.pt

​

18 of 18

18

Acknowledgements

​