A little introduction ...

The Cosmic Rays Telescope (CRT) for CRESCERE is based on the project "Network of Cosmic Rays Detectors" funded by the portuguese Agency "Ciência Viva", which is a collaboration between LIP, Instituto Superior Técnico of the Technical University in Lisboa (IST), and the following ten secondary schools (E.S.): E.S. Amadora, Amadora; E.S. D. Manuel I, Beja; E.S. Diogo de Gouveia, Beja; E.S. D. Pedro V, Lisboa; E.S. Gil Vicente, Lisboa; E.S. José Gomes Ferreira, Lisboa; E.S. Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho, Lisboa; E.S. Prof. Herculano de Carvalho, Lisboa; E.S. Mem Martins, Mem Martins; and E.S. Luís de Freitas Branco, Paço de Arcos.

LIP has installed a control station of three detectors of cosmic rays in the roof of IST, and is installing ten similar stations in the roofs of those secondary schools. We aim at collecting data from all the stations and study the correlations in time taking into the distance between the schools and the detectors.

For CRESCERE a very simple version of these detectors will be used, with the aim of measuring the rate of cosmic rays on the Earth's surface. The detector installed for CRESCERE consists of two superposed blocks of plastic scintillator, connected via light-guides to photomultipliers, which are read by a specially built data acquisition board installed in a computer. This computer is interfaced to the WEB via LABView.

If you want to know more about cosmic rays follow this link.

Configuration of the Cosmic Rays Telescope (CRT)
in the CRESCERE environment

In this site you can find out how to configure the hardware of the CRT, visualize some snapshots of the operating screen, showing the amplified electrical signals left by the passage of cosmic rays. After you reserve the experimental set-up, you can use the apparatus as you were sitting near to it, on your allocated time slot (you will be given a combination of username/password valid only in that time frame).

To operate properly the hardware of the CRT, you must follow the procedure:

  1. Read carefully the on-line manual
  2. Enroll yourself at the CRESCERE site (and in your allocated time frame access the portal to the experiments)
  3. After entering the portal and accessing this experiment, press the button LABVIEW to receive the Experiment control interface, where you can launch your experiment.
  4. After the experiment is finished, ask the tutor to make the produced files available on-line, download the data collected (collected in your allocated time, or collected earlier) and a sample analysis program, and analyze the data obtained from the experiment.

To continue click on the arrow (go to the on-line manual!)

Below you can connect to the other experiments
that can be performed in the CRESCERE environment