Astronomy in New Zealand

Cosmic Rays

Cosmic rays are high energy charged particles from outer space that travel at nearly the speed of light and strike the Earth from all directions - thousands pass through our bodies every second.

One of the first New Zealanders to be involved in cosmic ray research was William Pickering who conducted balloon-borne cosmic ray experiments with Nobel prize-winner Robert Millikan, before joining the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and pioneering telemetry systems for rockets. Director of JPL from 1954-1974, Pickering was responsible for Explorer 1 the first US satellite, the Ranger and Surveyor missions which mapped the moon in preparation for Apollo, the Mariner and Viking missions to Mars and Venus, the Pioneer probes and the Voyager missions to the gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Sir Ian Axford, former Director of the Max Planck Institut für Aeronomie (MPAE) and recipient of numerous awards and honours, has conducted research into the origin and acceleration of cosmic rays, and the properties of plasmas in astrophysics. Born in Dannevirke in 1933, he was educated at Napier Boys´ High School and the University of Canterbury, before completing a PhD in Applied Mathematics at Manchester University. His pioneering research into the dynamics of Earth´s magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind gave rise to one of his many scientific papers which have become "Citation Classics".

Much of his work has been concerned with the applying fluid dynamic concepts to astrophysical and space problems and he has been involved with many space research organisations including NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the UN-sponsored COSPAR.

Sir Ian made a crucial contribution to New Zealand science in the 1990s with his concept and design of the Marsden Fund which supports basic "non-applied" scientific research.

When high energy cosmic rays undergo collisions with atoms of the upper atmosphere, they produce a cascade of "secondary" particles that shower down through the atmosphere to the Earth´s surface. In the 1950s Jack Storey installed a small cosmic ray shower detector at the University of Auckland to determine whether the Galactic Centre was a cosmic ray source; he was awarded New Zealand´s first doctorate in Astrophysics. During the 1970s, searches for free quarks in the cosmic radiation were made by Philip Yock at the University of Auckland.

JANZOS, a joint NZ/Japan collaboration, investigated Supernova 1987A as a source of cosmic rays using a scintillator array and a Cherenkhov light telescope at Black Birch. JANZOS paved the way for the highly successful MOA collaboration.

Particle astrophysicist Jenni Adams leads the Canterbury team participating in the Radio Ice Cerenkov Experiment (RICE) and IceCube projects which aim to detect ultrahigh-energy neutrinos from space through their interactions with the Antarctic ice cap.

Research Areas


Facilitated by RASNZ The Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand (RASNZ)

Supported by RSNZ The Royal Society of New Zealand



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