BAKSAN: Underground and on the ground

In November a new air shower array to measure cosmic rays came into operation at the Baksan Valley, North Caucasus. Called 'Andyrchi' after the mountain it is located on, the array is a substantial addition to the Baksan Neutrino Observatory facilities built by the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Nuclear Research. The new array is constructed on the mountain slope 350m above the Baksan Underground Scintillation Telescope (BUST). It has 37 plastic scintillation detectors on a 40-m square grid covering 5 x 10⁴ sq m. The array can operate independently for ultra high energy gamma-ray astronomy