High energy cosmic ray iron spectrum experiment

We built an instrument containing a gas Cerenkov counter and an iron ionization spectrometer in order to measure the cosmic ray iron spectrum to 300 GeV/nucleon. Trajectories of particles were determined by entopistic or position determining scintillator systems. The geometric factors with and without the gas Cerenkov counter were 0.3 and 0.6 m2ster respectively. The instrument was successfully flown in June 1976 without the spectrometer and in October 1976 with the spectrometer from Palestine, Texas. The June flight yielded 14.5 h of data, the October flight 25 h. (author)