A compact cosmic ray telescope for outreach activities

The aim of this work is to introduce non-expert people in astroparticle physics by using a portable tracking telescope for muons. The device is composed of 10 planes of Resistive Plate Chamber (already used in the VETO, XPC and Spectrometers sub-apparatus of the OPERA experiment), each one 50 × 50 cm² equipped with orthogonal read-out strips (double view, X and Y) for the track reconstruction. A custom read-out system has been developed. It is based on the use of standard PCB as read-out system in which the strips have been drawn. Particle tracks are displayed by means of 32 LEDs (16 per view, 1 per strip) for each plane. A Controller Board acquires data from telescope and drives the LED lighting. All the features, as working parameters, gas flowing, high voltage, current monitoring, trigger conditions and event display can be managed by a laptop with a simple USB connection. The telescope will be operative at the end of this year and will be used by LNGS team in public events as well as to promote the scientific activities of the Laboratory.