Measurement of the East-West Effect of the Cosmic Muon Flux Using a Compact Telescope Based on Resistive-Plate-Chamber Technology

We describe the design, construction and operation of a compact cosmic rays (CRs) telescope of TRASGO (TRAck reconStructinG bOx) type, consisting of four resistive plate chambers (RPCs), located in Puebla City, Mexico, at a latitude/longitude of 18° 59’ 56” N/98° 11’ 41” W. and 2100 m.a.s.l. This telescope allows the detection of isolated muons with good angular resolution under the use of quality cuts on the TDC signals. We describe the implementation of a webpage with an event display that shows the hits on each of the 4 planes and the reconstructed trajectories of isolated muons. We use these clean events to measure the azimuthal distributions of the muons that cross the detector for various cuts on the zenith angle. We report on the measurement of the East-West asymmetry of the flux of secondary cosmic-ray muons and compare with detailed simulations of CRs based on CORSIKA software. Finally, we elaborate on the use of this type of small detectors in education and outreach activities to measure several properties of secondary cosmic-ray muons.