Recent progress at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Abstract

Cosmic ray particles exist with energies exceeding 1020eV. The source of this macroscopic energy in subatomic particles remains one of the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics. The Pierre Auger Observatory is the latest in a series of detectors built to study the problem. After a brief review of the highest cosmic rays, we will describe the design and schedule for the completion of the Auger detector. As an example of data collected with the project's "Engineering Array", we will then outline the reconstruction of a cosmic ray shower profile from fluorescence detector data.