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The Aragats Space Environment Center in Armenia provides real-time monitoring of cosmic particle fluxes. Neutron monitors operating at altitudes of 2000 m and 3200 m on Mt Aragats continuously gather data to detect possible abrupt enhancement of the count rates. Additional high precision detectors, measuring muon and electron fluxes, along with directional information have been put in operation on Mt Aragats in the summer of 2002. We plan to use this information to establish an early warning system against extreme solar energetic particle (SEP) events which pose danger to the satellite electronics and the space station crew. Solar ion and proton fluxes as measured by space-borne sensors on ACE and GOES satellites are used to derive expected arrival times of highest energy ions at 1 AU. The peaks in the time series detected by Aragats neutron monitors, coincided with these times, demonstrate the possibility of early detection of SEP events using the ground-based detectors.

No abstract

The phenomenological characteristics of the electron and muon components of extensive air showers with the range 105⩽Ne⩽107 are obtained from the GAMMA installation of the ANI experiment at Mt Aragats in Armenia at an observation level of 700 g cm-2. The experimental results are compared with other experiments and with the simulation carried out using the CORSIKA code and ARES package.

Experimental data on EAS characteristics with Ne > 105 are used to calculate the so-called αe-parameter which is directly connected with the energy of the primary cosmic ray radiation. It is shown that the distribution of showers selected by a constant value of this parameter is isotropic, and the measurement of the αe-spectrum is a direct way to obtain the primary energy spectrum. Using the αe-parameter, the primary all-particle energy spectrum of the cosmic radiation in the knee region is obtained. The energy spectrum is compared with the corresponding data of other experiments.