GRAINE balloon experiment in 2015

Precise observations of cosmic gamma rays by a high-resolution emulsion telescope

¹ Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8602, Japan
² Aich University of Education, ISAS/JAXA, Utsunomiya University, Okayama University of Science, Kobe University, and Nagoya University, Japan

^a e-mail: rokujo@flab.phys.nagoya-u.ac.jp

Published online: 26 June 2017

Abstract

Observations of cosmic gamma rays are important for studying high energy phenomena in the universe. Since 2008, the Large Area Telescope on the Fermi satellite has surveyed the whole gamma-ray sky in the sub-GeV/GeV energy region, and accumurated a large amount of data. However, observations at the low galactic latitude remains difficult because of a lack of angular resolution, increase of background flux originating from galactic diffuse gamma rays, etc. The Gamma-Ray Astro-Imager with Nuclear Emulsion (GRAINE) is a gamma-ray observation project with a new balloon-borne emulsion gamma-ray telescope. Nuclear emulsion is a high-resolution 3D tracking device. It determines the incident angle with 0.1^∘ resolution for 1 GeV gamma rays (1.0^∘ for 100 MeV), and has linear polarization sensitivity. GRAINE aims at precise observation of gamma-ray sources, especially in the galactic plane, by repeating long-duration balloon flights with large-aperture-area (10 m²) high-resolution emulsion telescopes. In May 2015, we performed a balloon-borne experiment in Alice Springs, Australia, in order to demonstrate the imaging performance of our telescope. The emulsion telescope that has an aperture area of 0.4 m² was employed in this experiment. It observed the Vela pulsar (the brightest gamma-ray source in the GeV sky) at an altitude of 37 km for 6 hours out of the flight duration of 14 hours. In this presentation, we will report the latest results and the status of the GRAINE project.