Aims. We use 5 years of Fermi-LAT data towards the Galactic-centre giant molecular cloud complex, Sagittarius B, to test questions of how well-mixed the Galactic component of cosmic rays are and what the level of the cosmic-ray sea in different parts of the Galaxy is. Methods. We use dust-opacity maps from the Planck satellite to obtain independent methods for background subtraction and an esti...

The completed IceCube Observatory, the first km neutrino telescope, is already providing the most stringent limits on the flux of high energy cosmic neutrinos from point-like and diffuse galactic and extra-galactic sources. The nondetection of extra-terrestrial neutrinos has important consequences on the origin of the cosmic rays. Here the current status of astrophysical neutrino searches, and ...

A report is given on the status and recent results from the HEGRA imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACT) concerning Mrk 501 and GRS 1915+105 and on recent results from the HEGRA arrays concerning galactic and extragalactic γ-sources, counterparts of TeV Gamma-Ray-Bursts, cosmic ray anisotropies, energy spectrum and composition of primary cosmic rays. The report summarizes the presentat...

The inverse Compton scattering of interstellar photons off cosmic-ray electrons seems to play a more important rôle in the generation of diffuse emission from the Galaxy than thought before. The background radiation field of the Galaxy is highly anisotropic since it is dominated by the radiation from the Galactic plane. An observer in the Galactic plane thus sees mostly head-on scatterings even...

Galactic cosmic ray (GCR) measurements of the phosphorus, sulfur, argon, and calcium isotopes made by the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) aboard NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer are reported over the energy range from ∼100 to ∼400 MeV/nucleon. The propagation of cosmic rays through the Galaxy and heliosphere is modeled to determine isotopic source abundance ratios P/S , S/S , Ar/Ar ,...

Evidence for the existence of low energy cosmic rays in the Galaxy comes from the COMPTEL observations of gamma ray line emission from Orion, and also from light element abundance data which seem to suggest a low energy rather than a relativistic Galactic cosmic ray origin for most of the light elements. The Orion and light isotope data are more consistent with a composition that is depleted in...

The Galactic diffuse soft gamma-ray (30-800 keV) emission has been measured from the Galactic Center by the HIREGS balloon-borne germanium spectrometer to determine the spectral characteristics and origin of the emission. The resulting Galactic diffuse continuum is found to agree well with a single power-law (plus positronium) over the entire energy range, consistent with RXTE and COMPTEL/CGRO ...

The solar wind modulates the flux of galactic cosmic rays impinging on Earth inversely with solar activity. Cosmic ray ionisation is the major source of air’s electrical conductivity over the oceans and well above the continents. Differential solar modulation of the cosmic ray energy spectrum modifies the cosmic ray ionisation at different latitudes, varying the total atmospheric columnar condu...

A new calculation of the Galactic diffuse gamma-ray spectrum from the decay of secondary particles produced by interactions of cosmic-ray protons with interstellar matter is presented. The calculation utilizes the modern Monte Carlo event generators, Hadrin, Fritiof and Pythia, which simulate high-energy proton-proton collisions and are widely used in studies of nuclear and particle physics, in...

When averaged over large solid angles, the cosmic ray intensity measured by the Fly's Eye reveals no statistically significant anisotropy. The sky is divided into 6 quadrilateral regions of equal solid angle which are centered on the directions of the galactic coordinate system's axes. For each of nine energy bands, we compare the number of detected cosmic rays in each region with the number ex...