The ERGO Energetic Ray Global Observatory consists of five major components. The first three combine to form a “pixel” of the ERGO system placed at each participating organization:
Once the data have been gathered and uploaded to the internet by each pixel, the final pieces of the system allow users to access and visualize the combined data which have been collected by detector systems all over the world.
SQL Database Server: An internet server, hosted by a commercial IP service, provides a repository for timestamps generated by all the detector systems around the world. Using a Microsoft SQL (“system query language) database, the combined data are available to users for analysis.
User Interfaces: Large mountains of raw data are neither interesting or exciting to most people. So, we will need to develop more user-friendly ways for students to get at the data and look for patterns. There will be provision to draw from the relational SQL database according to time and location, and some form of visual interface will be developed to give younger students an informative and interesting way to see data being collected in real time as well as historical data from the central database.