The applied cuts are listed in the Info.txt file shipped with the data package.

Open betas are released for two purposes. First of demonstrating a product to potential consumers, and second testing among a wide user base suitable to uncover errors that a few number of testers might not find.
Beta test phase means that all features provided are ok but the product is not 'feature complete'. We will permanently extend our offers and most of all we want to listen and respond to our users.

The user selections are kept roughly 2 weeks after the expiring date. Then the selections will be removed by a cron job.
You can always use the 'resubmit' button on the 'review page' to get the same data sample unless you have deleted the request in the 'review page'.

The number of one dimensional quantities provided the user is at present 24. If the arrays EDeposit, MDeposit, GDeposit and the Arrival Times of KASCADE and GRANDE would be included in an ASCII file it would blow up the file size by roughly a factor of 500! I.e. 390 Million Events (rows) with 3000 values (columns) each . In root and HDF5 it can be put in structures to save space.

In the former KCDC realese MERIDIAN we published the particle densities/station, nornmalized to tracklength and effective detector area which is different for the two types of KASCADE array detector stations. We decided to switch to energy depoosits because we think that it makes more sense in this special case to publish a measured value than a corrected one. This offers the users the unique possibility to build their own Lateral Energy Correction Function (LECF) to recalculate the densities/station by just knowing the angle of incidence (Ze) and the effective detector area besides the deposited energy.

A click on Download button will open a context menu in your Internet browser.

     - Internet Explorer (IE) - Save target as
     - Firefox - Save link as
     - Chrome - Save link as
     - Safari - Download linked file as

Each of these options will give you the opportunity to determine the Folder location on your computer to store the file after you entered again your credentials to get access to the Server.

The energy estimation for the KASCADE detector component is based on the measurement of the electromagnetic and the muonic components separately. This method does not work for GRANDE as we do not have an independent muon measurement. Thus the estimation of the primary energy would be too inaccurate.

We decided to reperform the whole time calibration for the KASCADE Array to increase the precision of the time dependent quantities. This is a very time- and CPU-consuming procedure which could not have been handled 10 years ago with the computer generation running at that time.

When you use KCDC with different accounts please make sure to logoff and close your browser before switching the account. Otherwise your identity will not be handled correctly.

The data structure of the KASCADE raw data is rather complex and depends on a lot of external information. Geometry and calibration are time-dependent stored in CERN HEPDB databases. Some correction files like air temperature and air pressure are stored as well in separate files. The reconstruction program KRETA uses all these information to perform a calibration and apply corrections on an event-by-event basis. The data are then stored in so called ntuples which are partly published here.

The number of one dimensional quantities provided to the user is at present 24. If the arrays MDeposit, EDepsit and Arrival Times for KASCADE and GDeposit and GArrival for GRANDE would be included in an ASCII file it would blow up the file size by roughly a factor of 50! I.e. 430 Million Events with more than 900 values each . In root and HDF5 it can be put in structures to save space.

We offer in MERIDIAN and in NABOO about 11% less data than in the former releases WOLF 359 and VULCAN. This reflects the fact that all KASCADE publications are based on data sets with the same trigger conditions. Earlier runs (between 282 and 876) were recorded with a higher trigger threshold resulting in a frequency of about 2Hz. From 8.5.1998 (run 877) we lowered the threshold to roughly double the data rate. All subsequent runs up to the last KASCADE run 7417 are recorded under the same trigger conditions. In order to ensure as far as possible a constant data quality for the whole data sample, we decided to reduce the data set offered.

In case you are interested in data sets only when Lopes has a valid reconstruction you have to apply a cut on the "LOPES Comp ID". This so call 'Lopse Component Identifier' is set to '1' when Lopes data are present in the event otherwise it doesn't exist. So a cut from '1' to '1' in "LOPES Comp ID" would do the job.

There is no fixed maintenance date. If possible downtimes will be announced in time p.e. for release change.

This effect is due to the way how the data are retrieved from the MongoDB using the primary key for fast access. This primary key is a string consisting of the run number and the event number. Therefore, it retrieves the event 1001 after event 1000xxxx. For an arbitrarily long number that starts with 1000.
If the order of events is important for analysis (for example if you want to estimate the effective running time of the experiment by plotting the time difference between two subsequent events) you have to sort the data of the ASCII data file. As the run number [R] and the event number within a run [EV] are both in increasing orders in time, a combination of those two quantities always shipped with the data gives a correct sequence.

The quantity Energy is derived from the formula described in the KCDC-Manual, calculated from the quantities Ne_e, N_mu, and the zenith angle (ZE). The parameters given are based on simulations using the high energy simulation model QGSjet-II-2.
The formula is valid above log E_o=14.8 (log N_e=4) where the detector has full trigger efficiency and below ZE=42°.
The estimated energy should not be used to apply cuts on data sets. For cuts it is strongly recommended to use the quantities N_e or N_mu or a combination of both respectively.

It is advisable to use the ‘row_mapping’ file to match events from different detector components like ‘array’, ‘grande’ and ‘calorimeter’. When a detector component is missing in the respective event the row_mapping entry is set to ‘-1’. The event counter for this component was not increased. The row_mapping information is always provided the user with the data sets.
As an example how to use row_mapping a zipped C++ program fragment can be downloaded via https-download.

KAOS is the acronym for Karlsruhe Astroparticlephysics Open data Software. It has been written in the context of the KASCADE Cosmic Ray Data Centre (KCDC), a web portal designed for the publication of scientific data recorded with the KASCADE experiment. KAOS is implemented using a plugin based design with a focus on easy extensibility and modifiability in order to work also outside the context of KCDC.
If you are interested in the KAOS source code please contact us.

When filling the mongoDB, the quantity 'microtime' was named 'M'. This means that the data sets which are made available to the users have these variable names. We will fix this inconsistency the next time the mongoDB is completely refilled.

The problem is that you created an account but did not yet submit a request via the KCDC DataShop. As the directories for the downloads (Simulations and Preselections) will be mounted with the first request we recommend as a workaround to submit a fast request to activate the mounts. A fast request would be for example to select only the KASCADE Energy with a cut from 17.5 to 19 (in log10) which will be ready in about 2 seconds.

If you have created a new user account and you want to download a preselection from the DataShop’s Preselection page or a simulation from the Simulations page,an error might occur indicating your home directory is not available (usually Error 421). This means that your download directory in the download area has not yet been created. For technical reasons. this directory will be created when first submitting a 'New Request' from the DataShop. A very fast request would be to set a cut on the energy to 18-19 eV (log10). This requests takes about 5 sec and returns 32 events.