The ERGO Energetic Ray Global Observatory consists of six major components. The first four components combine to form a “pixel” of the ERGO system placed at each participating organization:
- A Muon Detector
- A Timestamp Generator
- An Internet Connection
- A Datalogger
Once each pixel has gathered data packets and uploaded them to the internet, the final two components of the system allow users to access and visualize the combined data which have been collected by detector systems all over the world.
- The SQL Database Server: An internet server, hosted by a commercial IP service, provides a repository for event timestamps generated by all the detector systems around the world. Using a Microsoft SQL (“system query language”) database, the combined data are available to users for analysis.
- User Interfaces: Large mountains of raw data are neither interesting nor exciting to most people. So, we are developing more user-friendly ways for students to get at the data and look for patterns. There are provisions to draw from the relational SQL database according to time and location, and a graphical interface is being developed to give everyone an informative and interesting way to see data being collected in real time as well as historical data from the central database.