British plans for astronomy in Antarctica

Extract

The South Pole air shower experiment (SPASE), a joint Bartol Research Institute and Leeds University project, has been operational since the austral summer of 1987/88. It is a cosmic ray telescope searching for cosmic gamma rays at energies up to 1000 TeV. Although it has a relatively small area (6800 m²), it is situated at an altitude of 2800 m and has a 24 hour coverage, making it very competitive. The angular resolution of 0.°8 at 200 TeV is state-of-the-art in gamma ray astronomy. The astronomical programme includes searches for gamma ray sources, searches for anisotropy in the cosmic ray sky and measuring the energy spectrum over the range 10¹⁴-10¹⁶ eV.