juliensimon/auger-cosmic-rays
Pierre Auger Observatory Cosmic Rays Part of the Physics Datasets collection on Hugging Face. Summary data from the Pierre Auger Observatory, the world's largest detector of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Currently 24,319 records. Dataset description The Pierre Auger Observatory in Mendoza, Argentina, uses 1,660 water-Cherenkov surface detectors spread over 3,000 km^2, plus fluorescence telescopes, to detect cosmic rays with energies above 10^18 eV. These are the… See the full description on the dataset page: https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/auger-cosmic-rays.
Pierre Auger Observatory Cosmic Rays
Part of the [Physics Datasets](https://huggingface.co/collections/juliensimon/physics-datasets-69c2d4682d37dfdb77447bd7) collection on Hugging Face.
Summary data from the Pierre Auger Observatory, the world's largest detector of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Currently 24,319 records.
Dataset description
The Pierre Auger Observatory in Mendoza, Argentina, uses 1,660 water-Cherenkov surface detectors spread over 3,000 km^2, plus fluorescence telescopes, to detect cosmic rays with energies above 10^18 eV. These are the most energetic particles known in nature, and their origins remain one of the biggest open questions in astrophysics.
This dataset contains summary-level event data from the Auger open data release on Zenodo.
Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the most energetic particles observed in nature, with individual events carrying macroscopic amounts of kinetic energy -- a single particle at 10^20 eV has roughly the energy of a tennis ball served at 150 km/h, compressed into a single subatomic particle. When such a particle strikes the atmosphere, it triggers a cascade of billions of secondary particles called an extensive air shower, spreading over several square kilometers at ground level. The Pierre Auger Observatory detects these showers through a hybrid technique: the surface detector array measures the lateral distribution and timing of shower particles on the ground, while fluorescence telescopes observe the ultraviolet glow of atmospheric nitrogen excited by the shower as it develops. This combination provides both the energy and the atmospheric depth of shower maximum (Xmax), a key observable for inferring the mass composition of the primary cosmic ray.
Auger's major scientific results include the confirmation of the GZK suppression (the steepening of the cosmic ray spectrum above ~5x10^19 eV, expected from interactions with the cosmic microwave background), evidence for a dipole anisotropy in arrival directions above 8x10^18 eV suggesting an extragalactic origin, and measurements of Xmax distributions that indicate a transition from light (proton-like) to heavier (iron-like) composition at the highest energies. These findings constrain models of cosmic ray acceleration in astrophysical sources such as active galactic nuclei, gamma-ray bursts, and starburst galaxies.
This open dataset enables independent analyses of arrival direction distributions, energy spectrum features, and composition-sensitive observables. It is used in multi-messenger astrophysics studies correlating UHECR directions with neutrino and gamma-ray source catalogs, and for validating hadronic interaction models that describe particle physics at center-of-mass energies far beyond the reach of the LHC.
Schema
Quick stats
- 24,319 records
Usage
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("juliensimon/auger-cosmic-rays", split="train")
df = ds.to_pandas()
print(f"{len(df):,} Auger events")
print(df.describe())Data source
Pierre Auger Observatory Open Data, Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4487613
Pipeline
Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets
Support
If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.
Citation
@dataset{auger_cosmic_rays,
author = {Simon, Julien},
title = {Pierre Auger Observatory Cosmic Rays},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Hugging Face},
url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/auger-cosmic-rays},
note = {Based on Pierre Auger Observatory open data (Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.4487613)}
}