Auger Tank CenterOn June 8, 2005, the Pierre Auger Collaboration named Southeast Colorado as the location for a northern hemisphere cosmic ray observatory. The observatory will study high energy cosmic rays. Unlike other scientific projects, this will take the cooperation of landowners in Prowers, Baca, and Bent counties. Permission will be granted to place enclosed water tanks with sensitive, solar-powered equipment on private and public lands. Lamar Community College will play a role in the project by hosting a future visitor center. Throughout the 25+ year life of the project, the college plans to host project meetings and workshops and be an area "intellectual hub" for Pierre Auger scientists.
In September of 2006, Lamar Community College was named "Education and Outreach Host Institute" for Auger North. As part of LCC's commitment to the project, it hired an Outreach Education Coordinator in December of 2006. As the project evolves, the community, the college and its employees will become more involved in the project.
The collaboration made an additional step towards placing a Northern Hemisphere site in Colorado with the arrival and placement of two demonstration tanks in October of 2007. Located at the Bent County Fairgrounds (Las Animas, CO) and on the the LCC campus west of the Administration Building, the tanks allow visitors to see and touch a sample tank. An interim visitor center is also open in LCC's Bowman Building Room 148.
Following is an article dated June 8, 2005 from the Lamar Ledger.
- Auger Chooses SE Colorado
by Virgil Cochran - The Pierre Auger Collaboration today officially named Southeastern Colorado as the site for a cosmic ray observatory that will cover portions of at least three counties.
Pablo Bauleo, a postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State University, a top scientist in the project, said the full Auger Collaboration unanimously adopted a resolution naming the Colorado site as the Northern Hemisphere site during its meeting in Orsay, France. The resolution recommends Utah as a backup northern site and recommends continued contact with a third potential backup site in Idaho.
The announcement culminates years of work by Bauleo and Dr. John Harton of Colorado State University. A local effort was launched about three years ago to help develop the Southeast Colorado site. "We are all feeling very happy now, but the overwhelming thought is that there is an enormous amount of work to do now," said Harton. Developmental efforts have included creation of a landowner database in a five county region of Southeast Colorado, along with efforts to recruit landowner participation in the project.
The efforts also included a five-member fact finding mission to the Auger Project's observatory in Malargue, Argentina, as well as delegations to Auger Collaboration meetings in Leeds, England and Chicago, Illinois.
Southeast Colorado was once named as a potential backup site, but development of the site stalled after Auger officials named a site in west central Utah as their top choice during the 1990s. Issues have since arisen about the ability of the project to expand the area in which cosmic ray detector tanks are placed, and about access to the land in Utah, much of which is controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Harton renewed development of the site in Colorado by inquiring about potential use of local land, including land owned by the state of Colorado that is designated as state school land and usually involves one or two sections of land in each township.
Recognizing a rare opportunity, locals offered to help assist Harton and organized efforts through Southeast Colorado Enterprise Development (SECED). A key component of Southeast Colorado's success was to persuade hundreds of local landowners to allow Auger scientists to place detector tanks on their land. Tanks are about four to five feet tall, 12 feet in diameter and are filled with ultrapure water. Incoming cosmic ray particles interact with water in the tanks, emitting small bursts of light which can be detected by special electronic equipment.
The tanks have their own batteries and solar chargers on board and are fitted with self-contained radio communication equipment to allow them to be operated from a remote location. Thus scientists only need to enter the landowners' property a handful of times to install the tanks, fill them with water, and get the electronics running. After that, only maintenance or repair visits are necessary, and most tanks will operate for several years without an on-site visit to the tank site.
Scientists will also build one or more telescopes buildings in Southeast Colorado. The scopes are essentially giant curved mirrors fitted with photodetector electronics that can measure ultraviolet light. The light is emitted when the incoming cosmic ray particles interact with nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere. The ultraviolet light they emit can be detected by the fluorescence telescopes, although it cannot be seen by the human eye.
"We're ecstatic," said SECED Director Jan Anderson. "But most of all our appreciation goes out to all of the landowners who are participating in this project. Without their help, this project would not be possible. It is really not our project, it is their project, and we cannot thank them enough."
Dr. John Harton said Friday following a meeting of the site selection task force and the United States contingent of the Auger Collaboration, that some developmental work will begin almost immediately on the Colorado site. Harton and Bauleo have led the effort to conduct atmospheric tests of the Southeast Colorado skies, and Harton will now begin a testing program to design insulation for the detector tanks which will be subject to the sub-freezing winter temperatures of the eastern Colorado plains.
"Our work has just begun," said Anderson following Friday's Chicago meeting. Her agency will continue to work with the Auger scientists on development of the project.
Ingo Allekote, a top project manager for the Auger Observatory in Malargue, Argentina, said Friday that about half of the 1,600 detector tanks have now been installed and are collecting data in Argentina. The layout scheme there involves placement of the 1,600 tanks in a triangle based grid with tanks about one kilometer apart.
Here, the grid could look a little different. Bauleo recently developed a modified grid pattern based on placing tanks on a square-based grid one mile apart. Scientists at Friday's Chicago meeting generally agreed that is a good idea in the U.S. where land is divided into one mile square sections. It will improve scientists access to the tanks by keeping them closer to roadways and will be more convenient for landowners.
The project holds much promise for the region. Headquarters for the Northern Hemisphere Observatory will be located on the Lamar Community College Campus. The college has pledged use of at least five acres of land, and Mike Beasley of the Governor's Office of Economic Development and International Trade has offered a $250,000 grant to be used toward construction of the visitors center.
In Malargue, scientists operate the management and data headquarters, the visitors center, and the water purification and tank assembly facilities for a single approximately five-acre campus, but they have located several other aspects of the project around the community of Malargue and the region.
Harton said the same thing will happen here. The Auger project can build various facets of the project in surrounding communities, like electronic testing and assembly, manufacture of tank liners, and water purification.
The observatory will be one of only two in the world, and should provide a significant tourist attraction to Southeast Colorado. As well, the Auger Project works closely with the local educational system, and local teachers and students will also be big beneficiaries of the project.
It will take a couple of years for serious construction to unfold, said Harton. The funding for the project is somewhat complex because there are around 60 universities and 20 nations involved, and the budget for the project will be in the tens of millions of dollars. Harton said that he will push for a meeting of the full Auger Collaboration in southeast Colorado, hopefully as soon as next summer. Around 300 scientists from around the world typically attend the collaboration meetings, which last for several days, making the project a boon to local lodging and restaurant businesses.
The project in Southeast Colorado could end up being bigger than the Argentinian array of detectors. The ability to expand the array over a wider geographic area was a factor in selecting the Colorado site over Utah.
A critical part of the siting decision for the project actually took place at the Friday, June 3 meeting at the Fermi Lab in suburban Chicago, Illinois. Southeast Colorado has enjoyed enormous support from the state level as the project unfolded. Among those attending the Friday meeting were Mike Beasley, along with Evan Metcalf of the Department of Local Affairs. Beasley was instrumental in securing grants for SECED's development and planning of the project, as well as for winning approval of state income tax credits to be awarded to landowners on whose land the detectors will be placed. The state officials also provided the $250,000 grant to help fund the visitor center.
State Senator Ken Kester of Las Animas was among the local contingent attending Friday's meeting in Chicago. Kester outlined the support from state and local government, including a resolution in support of the project passed unanimously by both houses of the Colorado Legislature last year. "It is extremely rare to ever get 100 politicians to agree on anything," Kester joked.
Lamar Community College also jumped on board early when then LCC President Bette Matkowski offered the use of LCC land for the visitor center, as well as use of college facilities for classrooms and meetings. The LCC Wellness Center also hosts some high tech ultraviolet radiation monitoring equipment which tracks daytime atmospheric clarity.
Dr. David Smith now serves as interim president of LCC, and Smith has carried on Matkowski's pledge for the college to support the project in any way possible. It is extremely rare, Smith said, for a two year community college to host a world class physics research project. LCC, he said, may be the only two-year college in the nation with that distinction.
All three involved counties have also strongly supported the project. County Commissioners Troy Crane (Baca County) and Frank Wallace (Bent County) and former Prowers County Commissioner John Stulp were among those attending the fact finding mission in Argentina and a presentation on development of the project in Leeds, England last summer.
Prowers County has also provided a facility for scientists to conduct atmospheric testing. Harton and Bauleo have a 16-inch reflecting telescope specially fitted with laser equipment and ultraviolet detection modifications to test the atmosphere above Southeast Colorado skies. Those operations are conducted at the former Journey building about ten miles south of Lamar. That work will also continue as the project moves forward.
Colorado State University and the University of Colorado have also been important in the project. Hank Gardner, vice president for research at CSU and Jim Sites, an Associate Dean for Research at CSU, participated in Friday's meeting at the Fermi Lab, as well as Jeff Brack of the University of Colorado, whose work in developing calibration equipment for fluorescense telescopes has been instrumental.
"The siting of the Pierre Auger Observatory in Southeast Colorado is very exciting news and is the result of very hard work of many people at CSU and across Southeast Colorado," said Gardner. "It is also very exciting for the advancement of high energy physics."
Gardner said that the success is the result of the work of a team of people working together and if any part of the effort had failed, Colorado would not have landed the project. But he singled out the work of Dr. John Harton is his university's physics department. This reflects credit on the hard and outstanding work of Dr. John Harton who has worked tirelessly on this project for ten years," Gardner said.