Team
Lisa Romaneehsen, Marc Hansen, Jonas Zumkeller, Patrick Pohland, Friederike Schattke
The main objective of TANOS is to measure the flux of thermal neutrons in the stratosphere, as there are only few existing measurements. Due to galactic cosmic rays interacting with atmospheric particles, secondary neutrons are generated. Those are moderated to thermal energies through elastic scattering. These resulting neutrons are very slow, with an energy of 0.025 eV. The flux of secondary particles is the largest at a height of about 20 km, the so called Pfotzer maximum.
In order to measure these low energy neutrons we developed an instrument consisting of a silicon detector stack and two layers of gadolinium foil between two detectors. The cross section of gadolinium is very high for thermal neutrons, around 49000 barn, thus this material is particularly suitable for the experiment.
Experiment TANOS on BEXUS-29
Experiment TANOS Junior on own weather ballons
TANOS-Junior launch 1
TANOS-Junior flew the first time on September 24, 2018.
The STRATO3 Datalogger provides GPS, temperature, pressure, and humidity:
TANOS Junior launch 2
TANOS-Junior flew a second time on May 5, 2019, with more gain in the preamplifiers and two additional video cameras.
© 2018-2023 Jonas Zumkeller
