LA - UR 99 - 2609 Milagro Collaboration Contributions to XXVI th ICRC Salt Lake City , UT August , 1999

The Milagro Gamma Ray Observatory is the world’s first large-area water Cherenkov detector capable of continuously monitoring the sky at TeV energies. Located in the mountains of northern New Mexico, Milagro will perform an all sky survey of the Northern Hemisphere at energies between 250 GeV and 50 TeV. With a high duty-cycle ( 100%), large detector area ( 5000m), and wide field-of-view ( 1 sr), Milagro is uniquely capable of searching for transient and DC sources of high-energy -ray emission. Milagro has been operating since February, 1999. The current status of the Milagro Observatory and initial results will be discussed.