MITO, a new directional muon telescope design. First observations

The Muon Impact Tracer and Observer (MITO) is a new cosmic ray detector, part of the Antarctic Cosmic Ray Observatory (ORCA), recently deployed by the University of Alcalá at the Juan Carlos I Spanish Antarctic Station (JCI) on Livingston Island, Antarctic Peninsula (S62º39’46”, W60º23’20”, 12 m asl). MITO is composed of two stacked 100 cm x 100 cm x 5 cm BC-400 organic scintillators, eight photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) with corresponding light guides, a 16 cm lead separation layer, and an electronic data acquisition module able to register muon flux and pulse amplitude data. The goal of this setup is to provide a real-time estimation of the muon impact points on each scintillator and, thus, the muon arrival directions, based on the comparison of the pulse heights registered by each PMT. The electronic data acquisition module has been designed using different approaches and processing technologies (analogue and digital) producing some theoretically equivalent and redundant results which can be compared and used for better reliability. In this work we present the MITO design and discuss the preliminary results of the latitudinal survey of cosmic ray fluxes performed during its cruise aboard the Sarmiento de Gamboa oceanographic research vessel from Vigo (Spain) to the Antarctic Peninsula, from November 14th, 2018 to January 2nd, 2019.