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Message from the researcher
Identifying muon rings is like pulling a needle from a haystack in a field of haystacks if the needle was made of straw. But the search ultimately makes it easier to probe the particle universe. - Dr. Michael Daniel, Operations Manager, VERITAS
Muon Hunter ClassicAbout Muon Hunter Classic
Astronomers using the VERITAS telescopes to detect some of the highest-energy photons in the Universe need your help! These photons are gamma-rays that originate in astrophysical environments like the expanding blast waves thrown out by supernova explosions, or from powerful streams of material that flow from the cores of active galaxies at speeds close to that of light. Muons (a particle like an electron, only heavier) are a prominent background contaminant when observing very-high-energy gamma rays on earth. They leave a distinctive ring-like shape making them obvious to the human eye, but incomplete or truncated rings can appear very gamma-ray-like to automatic analysis algorithms. We need your help to identify camera images that contain muon rings so we can teach computers to better identify such images and efficiently filter out those pesky muons that are masquerading as gamma rays.
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The Muon Hunter sequence of projects was developed with awards from both the US National Science Foundation and the ASTERICS Horizon2020 project. ASTERICS is a project supported by the European Commission Framework Programme Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation action under grant agreement n. 653477