A long base line-multi air shower array system in the Western United States to study gamma ray bursts from active stellar systems

This paper reports that gamma rays serve as a powerful probe of very high energy processes in active stellar systems. The neutrality of gamma rays insures that they are not deflected by Galactic magnetic fields, and their zero mass insures that they preserve the time structure of their production. Very high energy gamma rays, above 1012-- 014 eV, permit us to study high energy physics phenomena in active stellar systems in energy domains above those presently available in terrestrial accelerators. A number of such objects, Cygnus X-3, Hercules X-2 and the Crab Nebula, have been studied in recent years. The main detectors used in these studies are air Cerenkov telescopes (1012 eV threshold) and extensive air shower arrays (1014 eV threshold). Recent observations of Her X-1 suggest that there are busts of gamma ray-like particles with durations of 10--20 minutes. One such burst was detected by the Haleakala Cerenkov telescope on May 13, 1986 (15 minute duration) another by the Whipple Cerenkov Telescope on June 11, 1986 ( 25 minutes duration) and two by the Cygnus air shower array on July 24, 1986 (28 and 21 minutes duration). The signals in all of these observations exhibited a period of about 1.236 seconds, slightly lower that the period of X-ray emissions, 1.2378 seconds