An eye for neutrinos

14 January 1998

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Near Sudbury, Ontario, a new "telescope" to observe neutrinos from the Sun is nearing completion. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO), located in the Creighton Mine near Sudbury, will contain 1000 tonnes of heavy water to trap some of the billions of elusive neutrinos from the Sun that reach each square centimetre of the Earth each second. The neutrinos will occasionally interact in the heavy water, and these interactions will yield energetic particles that emit light (Cherenkov radiation) as they travel through the water. To detect this light there will be 10,000 light-sensitive phototubes, supported on a geodesic structure surrounding the 12-m diameter acrylic vessel that contains the water. This image shows one of the 20-cm diameter phototubes (lower left) and the light-concentrating structure in which it normally fits (lower right); complete units are visible in the background. The light concentrators were developed at Oxford University and the University of British Colombia, and supplied by Oxford.

Credit: Physics Photographic Unit, University of Oxford
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