Observation in the MINOS far detector of the shadowing of cosmic rays by the sun and moon

Abstract

The shadowing of cosmic ray primaries by the the moon and sun was observed by the MINOS far detector at a depth of \unit[2070]{mwe} using 83.54 million cosmic ray muons accumulated over 1857.91 live-days. The shadow of the moon was detected at the \unit[5.6]{$\sigma$} level and the shadow of the sun at the \unit[3.8]{$\sigma$} level using a log-likelihood search in celestial coordinates. The moon shadow was used to quantify the absolute astrophysical pointing of the detector to be 0.17\pm 0.12^\circ. Hints of Interplanetary Magnetic Field effects were observed in both the sun and moon shadow.

Submitted to AstroParticle Physics

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Observation of the cosmic-ray shadow of the Moon with IceCube
• Measurement of the cosmic ray antiproton/proton flux ratio at TeV energies with the ARGO-YBJ detector
• First observation of the cosmic ray shadow of the Moon and the Sun with KM3NeT/ORCA
• Observation of the cosmic ray shadow of the Sun with the ANTARES neutrino telescope
• Detection of the Temporal Variation of the Sun's Cosmic Ray Shadow with the IceCube Detector
• Neutrino Oscillations with the MINOS, MINOS+, T2K, and NOvA Experiments