https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201611606004
Moon shadow observation with ANTARES and KM3NeT neutrino telescope
1 INFN – Sezione di Genova, via Dodecaneso 33, 16146 Genova, Italy
2 Dipartimento di Fisica dell'Università, via Dodecaneso 33, 16146 Genova, Italy
3 INFN – Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS), via S. Sofia 62, 95123 Catania, Italy
a e-mail: matteo.sanguineti@ge.infn.it
b e-mail: distefano_c@lns.infn.it
Published online: 11 April 2016
The ANTARES detector is the largest neutrino telescope currently in operation in the Northern Hemisphere. The search for point-like neutrino sources is one of the main goals of ANTARES, so a reliable way to evaluate the detector pointing performance is needed. The Moon shadow measurement, i.e. the deficit in the atmospheric muon flux in the direction of the Moon induced by absorption of cosmic rays, allows the estimation of the angular resolution and the pointing accuracy. The 2007–2012 ANTARES data set shows a significance of Moon shadowing around 3σ. This is the first measurement of the ANTARES angular resolution and absolute pointing for atmospheric muons using a celestial calibration source. The same approach has been used to estimate also the expected Moon shadow significance with the KM3NeT-ARCA detector, the future cubic kilometre scale detector that will be installed in Sicily.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2016
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
