We analyze the sidereal daily variations observed between 1985 and 2006 at Matsushiro, Japan (MAT) and between 1993 and 2005 at Liapootah, Tasmania (LPT). These stations comprise the two hemisphere network (THN) of underground muon detectors in Japan and Australia. Yearly mean harmonic vectors at MAT and LPT are more or less stable without any significant change in phase and amplitude in correlation with either the solar activity- or magnetic-cycles. In this paper, therefore, we analyze the average anisotropy over the entire observation periods, i.e. 1985-2006 for MAT and 1993-2005 for LPT. We apply to the THN data a best-fitting analysis based on a model anisotropy in space identical to that adopted by Amenomori et al. (2007) for Tibet III data. The median energies of primary cosmic rays recorded are ~0.5 TeV for THN and ~5 TeV for the Tibet III experiment. It is shown that the intensity distribution of the best-fit anisotropy is quite similar to that derived from Tibet III data, regardless of the order of magnitude difference in energies of primary particles. This, together with the THN observations, confirms that the analysis by Amenomori et al. (2007) based on the Tibet III experiment in the northern hemisphere is not seriously biased. The best-fit amplitudes of the anisotropy, on the other hand, are only one third or less of those reported by the Tibet III experiment, indicating attenuation due to solar modulation. The rigidity dependence of the anisotropy amplitude in the sub-TeV region is consistent with the spectrum reported by Hall et al. (1999), smoothly extending to the Tibet III result in the multi-TeV region. The amplitude at higher energies appears almost constant or gradually decreasing with increasing rigidity.
We present the large-scale sidereal anisotropy ofgalactic cosmic-ray intensity in the multi-TeV region observed with the Tibet-IIIair shower array during the period from 1999 through 2003. The sidereal daily variation of cosmic rays observed in this experiment shows an excess of relative intensity around $4\sim7 $ hours local sidereal time, as well as a deficit around 12 hours local sidereal time. While the amplitude of the excess is not significant when averaged over all declinations, the excess in individual declinaton bands becomes larger and clearer as the viewing direction moves toward th…
An all-sky cloud monitoring system that generates relative opacity maps over many of the world's premier astronomical observatories is described. Photometric measurements of numerous background stars are combined with simultaneous sky brightness measurements to differentiate thin clouds from sky glow sources such as air glow and zodiacal light. The system takes a continuous pipeline of all-sky images, and compares them to canonical images taken on other nights at the same sidereal time. Data interpolation then yields transmission maps covering almost the entire sky. An implementation of this s…
The intensity of Galactic cosmic rays is nearly isotropic because of the influence of magnetic fields in the Milky Way. Here, we present two-dimensional high-precision anisotropy measurement for energies from a few to several hundred teraelectronvolts (TeV), using the large data sample of the Tibet Air Shower Arrays. Besides revealing finer details of the known anisotropies, a new component of Galactic cosmic ray anisotropy in sidereal time is uncovered around the Cygnus region direction. For cosmic-ray energies up to a few hundred TeV, all components of anisotropies fade away, showing a corot…
We discuss recently published results of two-dimensional measurements of the cosmic ray anisotropy in the energy range 1-100 TeV. It is demonstrated that, in spite of pretence of the authors to measure the anisotropy in more detail than it was done in one-dimensional measurements of the first harmonic of CR intensity in sidereal time, new measurements give nothing essentially new. Moreover, two-dimensional picture is misleading creating an illusion that the true direction of the anisotropy is observed, while, as before, only the projection of the anisotropy onto the equatorial plane is measure…
The results of measuring diurnal variations of extensive air showers with energy above 100 TeV detected by the Andyrchi air shower array in 1995-2002 are presented. It is shown that solar diurnal wave of intensity is formed by pressure variations and Compton-Getting effect (due to the orbital motion of the Earth). The data on cosmic ray anisotropy of the Baksan underground scintillation telescope (BUST) are also presented for energies above 2.5 TeV covering the period 1982-1998. The diurnal sidereal wave measured by both Andyrchi and BUST is due to anisotropy of the cosmic rays.
A cosmic ray observatory with full-sky coverage can exploit standard anisotropy analysis methods that do not work if part of the celestial sphere is never seen. In particular, the distribution of arrival directions can be fully characterized by a list of spherical harmonic coefficients. The dipole vector and quadrupole tensor are of special interest, but the full set of harmonic coefficients constitutes the anisotropy fingerprint that may be needed to reveal the identity of the cosmic ray sources. The angular power spectrum is a coordinate-independent synopsis of that fingerprint. The true cos…
We present a fast algorithm for generating full sky, high resolution ($\sim 5'$) simulations of the CMB anisotropy pattern. We also discuss the inverse problem, that of evaluating from such a map the full set of $a_{\ell m}$'s and the spectral coefficients $C_\ell$. We show that using an Equidistant Cylindrical Projection of the sky substantially speeds up the calculations. Thus, generating and/or inverting a full sky, high resolution map can be easily achieved with present day computer technology.
We report on additional observations of degree scale anisotropy at 90~GHz from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. Observations during the first season with the Python instrument yielded a statistically significant sky signal; in this paper we report the confirmation of that signal with data taken in the second year, and on results from an interleaving set of fields.
The isotropy of gamma-ray bursts collected in Current BATSE catalog is studied. It is shown that the quadrupole term being proportional to $\sim \sin 2b \sin l$ is non-zero with a probability 99.9%. The occurrence of this anisotropy term is then confirmed by the binomial test even with the probability 99.97 %. Hence, the sky distribution of all known gamma-ray bursts is anisotropic. It is also argued that this anisotropy cannot be caused exclusively by instrumental effects due to the nonuniform sky exposure of BATSE instrument. Separating the GRBs into short and long subclasses, it is shown th…
The measurement of large scale patterns or anisotropies in the arrival direction of high energy cosmic rays is an important step towards the understanding of their origin. Such measurements rely on an accurate estimation of the detector relative exposure in each direction on the sky : the coverage map. To reach an accuracy on the determination of this map below the one percent level one must properly identify and correct for all the environmental effects that may induce variations in the detector exposure as a function of time. In an approach, similar to the one used in anti-sidereal time anal…
Results are reported from the first flight of a new balloon-borne instrument, BAM (Balloon-borne Anisotropy Measurement), designed to search for cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy. The instrument uses a cryogenic differential Fourier transform spectrometer to obtain data in five spectral channels whose central frequencies lie in the range 3.7 cm^{-1} to 8.5 cm^{-1}. The spectrometer is coupled to an off-axis prime focus telescope; the combination yields difference spectra of two regions on the sky defined by 0\fdg 7 FWHM beams separated by 3\fdg 6. Single differences obtained at ten …
The COBE satellite has provided the only comprehensive multi-frequency full-sky observations of the microwave sky available today. Assessment of the observations requires a detailed likelihood analysis to extract the maximum amount of information present in the noisy data. I present a specific method for estimating the CMB anisotropy power spectrum independent of any assumptions about the underlying cosmology, and then use standard image processing techniques to generate the most revealing corresponding maps of the signal. The consistency of the data at the available frequencies provides stron…
The sky-RMS is the simplest model-independent characterization of a cosmological anisotropy signal. The RMS temperature fluctuations determined from the $COBE$-DMR four-year sky maps are frequency independent, consistent with the hypothesis that they are cosmological in origin, with a typical amplitude at 7 degrees of ~ 35 \pm\ 2 uK and at 10 degrees of ~29 \pm\ 1 uK. A joint analysis of the 7 deg and 10 deg "cross"-RMS derived from the data in both Galactic and Ecliptic coordinates is used to determine the RMS quadrupole normalization, $Q_{rms-PS}$, for a scale-invariant Harrison-Zel'dovich p…
We consider several factors concerning the design of observing strategies in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy experiments. First we consider the number of independent points on the sky one should observe given a fixed observing time. Given an assumed level of sky temperature fluctuations, $σ_{sky}$ and the presence of instrumental noise $s$ in units of K s$^{-1/2}$ and a total observing time $t_{obs}$, we find there is an optimum number of points in the sky to maximize the confidence level of a detection. This number is a function of the signal to noise ratio $R^2 = σ_{sky}^2 t_{ob…
We present a determination of the cosmic microwave background dipole amplitude and direction from the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometers (DMR) first year of data. Data from the six DMR channels are consistent with a Doppler-shifted Planck function of dipole amplitude Delta T = 3.365 +/-0.027 mK toward direction (l,b) = (264.4 +/- 0.3 deg, 48.4 +/- 0.5 deg). The implied velocity of the Local Group with respect to the CMB rest frame is 627 +/- 22 km/s toward (l,b) = (276 +/- 3 deg, 30 +/- 3 deg). DMR has also mapped the dipole anisotropy resulting from the Earth's orbital motion about the S…
Results are presented of a harmonic analysis of the large scale cosmic-ray anisotropy as observed by the Milagro observatory. We show a two-dimensional display of the sidereal anisotropy pro jections in right ascension generated by the fitting of three harmonics to 18 separate declination bands. The Milagro observatory is a water Cherenkov detector located in the Jemez mountains near Los Alamos, New Mexico. With a high duty cycle and large field-of-view, Milagro is an excellent instrument for measuring this anisotropy with high sensitivity at TeV energies. The analysis is conducted using a sev…
The third year of observations with the Python microwave background experiment densely sample a $5.5^o\times 22^o$ region of sky that includes the fields measured during the first two years of observations with this instrument. The sky is sampled in two multipole bands centered at $l \approx 92$ and $l \approx 177$. These two data sets are analyzed to place limits on fluctuations in the microwave sky at 90 GHz. Interpreting the observed fluctuations as anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background we find flat band power estimates of $δT_l\equiv \sqrt{l(l+1)C_l/2π}% =54_{-12}^{+14}μK$ at $l=92…
We study the apparent lack of power on large angular scales in the WMAP data. We confirm that although there is no apparent lack of power at large angular scales for the full-sky maps, the lowest multipoles of the WMAP data happen to have the magnitudes and orientations, with respect to the Galactic plane, that are needed to make the large scale power in cut-sky maps surprisingly small. Our analysis shows that most of the large scale power of the observed CMB anisotropy maps comes from two regions around the Galactic plane (~9% of the sky). One of them is a cold spot within ~40 degrees of the …
We consider the issue of hemispherical power asymmetry in the three-year WMAP data, adopting a previously introduced modulation framework. Computing both frequentist probabilities and Bayesian evidences, we find that the model consisiting of an isotropic CMB sky modulated by a dipole field, gives a substantially better fit to the observations than the purely isotropic model, even when accounting for the larger prior volume. For the ILC map, the Bayesian log-evidence difference is ~1.8 in favour of the modulated model, and the raw improvement in maximum log-likelihood is 6.1. The best-fit modul…
We explore the angular distribution of two samples of satellite galaxies orbiting isolated hosts extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4. We find a clear alignment of the satellites along the major axis of their hosts when restricting the analysis to red hosts. The anisotropy is most pronounced for red satellites of red hosts. We find that the distribution of the satellites about blue, isolated hosts is consistent with isotropy. We show that under the assumption that the true, underlying distribution of satellites of blue hosts exhibits the same anisotropy as the satellites …
We present an overview of the upcoming Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) mission, with an emphasis on those aspects of the mission that simplify the data analysis. The method used to make sky maps from the differential temperature data is reviewed and we present some of the noise properties expected from these maps. An overview of the method we plan to use to mine the angular power spectrum from the mega-pixel sky maps closes the paper.
Recent detections of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy at half-degree angular scales show considerable scatter in the reported amplitude even at similar angular resolution. We use Monte Carlo techniques to simulate the current set of medium-scale CMB observations, including all relevant aspects of sky coverage and measurement technique. The scatter in the reported amplitudes is well within the range expected for the standard cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model, and results primarily from the restricted sky coverage of each experiment. Within the context of standard CDM current…
After the detection of structure in the microwave sky, the characterization of the observed features may be a useful guide to current and future experiments. The first year COBE-DMR sky maps were analyzed in order to identify the most significant hot and cold spots. The statistical significance of potential spots of cosmic origin was evaluated with Monte Carlo simulations. The area, eccentricity, and location of the most significant spots are given.
We apply spherical needlets to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 5-year cosmic microwave background (CMB) dataset, to search for imprints of non-isotropic features in the CMB sky. We use the needlets localization properties to resolve peculiar features in the CMB sky and to study how these features contribute to the anisotropy power spectrum of the CMB. In addition to the now well-known "cold spot" of the CMB map in the southern hemisphere, we also find two hot spots at greater than 99% confidence level, again in the southern hemisphere and closer to the Galactic plane. While the cold s…
The frequency-independent RMS temperature fluctuations determined from the COBE-DMR two year sky maps are used to infer the parameter Q_{rms-PS}, which characterizes the normalization of power law models of primordial cosmological temperature anisotropy. In particular, a 'cross'-RMS statistic is used to determine Q_{rms-PS} for a forced fit to a scale-invariant Harrison-Zel'dovich (n = 1) spectral model. Using a joint analysis of the 7 degree and 10 degree RMS temperature derived from both the 53 and 90 GHz sky maps, we find Q_{rms-PS} = 17.0^{+2.5}_{-2.1} uK when the low quadrupole is include…
Galactic foreground emission is a limiting factor for precise cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements. We perform an angular power spectrum analysis (APS) of all-sky total intensity maps at 408 MHz and 1420 MHz, which are dominated by synchrotron emission out of the Galactic plane. We subtract the brighter sources from the maps. We study the APS as a function of Galactic latitude by considering various cuts and as a function of sky position by dividing the sky into patches of about 15 deg x 15 deg in size. The APS of the Galactic radio diffuse synchrotron emission is best fit…
The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under rotations of the sky. We investigate the statistical isotropy of the CMB anisotropy maps recently measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) using bipolar spherical harmonic power spectrum proposed in Hajian & Souradeep 2003. The Bipolar Power Spectrum (BiPS) is estimated for the full sky CMB anisotropy maps of the first year WMAP data. The method allows us to isolate regions in multipole space and study each region independently. This searc…
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has mapped the full sky in five frequency bands between 23 and 94 GHz. The primary goal of the mission is to produce high-fidelity, all-sky, polarization-sensitive maps that can be used to study the cosmic microwave background. Systematic errors in the maps are constrained to new levels: using all-sky data, aspects of the anisotropy may confidently be probed to sub-microKelvin levels. We give a brief description of the instrument and an overview of the first results from an analysis of maps made with one year of data. The highlights are (1) the f…
We compute the two-, three- and four-point correlation functions from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) first-year data, and compare these to a Monte Carlo ensemble of 5000 realizations, based on the best-fit WMAP running-index spectrum of Gaussian fluctuations. The analysis is carried out in three steps, covering small (< 72'), intermediate (< 5 degrees) and large scales (up to 180 degrees). On the largest scales our results are consistent with the previously reported hemisphere power asymmetries: the northern ecliptic hemisphere is practically devoid of large scale fluctuations…
Extensive, accurate imaging of the Cosmic Background Radiation temperature anisotropy at sub--degree angular resolution is widely recognized as one of the most crucial goals for cosmology and astroparticle physics in the next decade. We review the scientific case for such measurements in relation with sky coverage, attainable sensitivity, confusing foreground radiation components, and experimental strategies. Although ground--based and balloon--borne experiments will provide valuable results, only a well--designed, far--Earth orbit space mission covering a wide spectral range and a significant…
We propose a novel representation of cosmic microwave anisotropy maps, where each multipole order l is represented by l unit vectors pointing in directions on the sky and an overall magnitude. These "multipole vectors and scalars" transform as vectors under rotations. Like the usual spherical harmonics, multipole vectors form an irreducible representation of the proper rotation group SO(3). However, they are related to the familiar spherical harmonic coefficients, alm, in a nonlinear way, and are therefore sensitive to different aspects of the CMB anisotropy. Nevertheless, it is straightforwar…
We combine the recently published CIZA galaxy cluster catalogue with the XBACs cluster sample to produce the first all-sky catalogue of X-ray clusters in order to examine the origins of the Local Group's peculiar velocity without the use of reconstruction methods to fill the traditional Zone of Avoidance. The advantages of this approach are (i) X-ray emitting clusters tend to trace the deepest potential wells and therefore have the greatest effect on the dynamics of the Local Group and (ii) our all-sky sample provides data for nearly a quarter of the sky that is largely incomplete in optical c…
In this paper we develop the theory of clusterization of peaks in a Gaussian random field. We have obtained new mathematical results from this theory and the theory of percolation and have proposed a topological method of analysis of sky maps based on these results. We have simulated $10^o\times10^o$ sky maps of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy expected from different cosmological models with $0.5^o-1^o$ resolution in order to demonstrate how this method can be used for detection of non-Gaussian noise in the maps and detection of the Doppler-peak in the spectrum of perturbation of $\…
We study the polarization-polarization and polarization-temperature correlations in standard adiabatic scenarios for structure formation. Temperature anisotropies due to gravitational potential wells and oscillations in the photon-baryon-electron fluid on the surface of last scattering are each associated with a correlated polarization pattern. While the `correlated part' of the polarization has an r.m.s. of only a third of the total signal, it may still be measurable by mapping a large area on the sky. We calculate the expected signal to noise ratio for various measures of the polarization in…
The relative sidereal variation in the arrival direction of primary cosmic ray nuclei of median energy 10 TeV was measured using downward, through-going muons detected with the Super-Kamiokande-I detector. The projection of the anisotropy map onto the right ascension axis has a first harmonic amplitude of $(6.64 \pm 0.98 {stat.} \pm 0.55 {syst.}) \times 10^{-4}$ and a phase at maximum at $(33.2^\circ \pm 8.2^\circ {stat.} \pm 5.1^\circ {syst.})$ right ascension. A sky map in equatorial coordinates indicates an excess region in the constellation of Taurus and a deficit region toward Virgo. The …
The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under rotations of the sky. We investigate the Statistical Isotropy (SI) of the CMB anisotropy maps recently measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) using Bipolar Power Spectrum (BiPS) proposed in [Hajian & Souradeep 2003]. The method can probe specific regions in multipole space using appropriate window functions. The BiPS is estimated for full sky CMB anisotropy maps based on the first year WMAP data using a range of window functions. The…
The statistical expectation values of the temperature fluctuations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) are assumed to be preserved under rotations of the sky. This assumption of {\em statistical isotropy} (SI) of the CMB anisotropy should be observationally verified since detection of violation of SI could have profound implications for cosmology. We propose a set of measures, $κ_\ell$ ($\ell=1,2,3, ...$) for detecting violation of statistical isotropy in an observed CMB anisotropy sky map indicated by non zero $κ_\ell$. We define an estimator for the $κ_\ell$ spectrum and analytically comput…