| Summary: | The SuperTIGER (Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) instrument was developed to measure the abundances of galactic cosmic-ray elements from _(10)Ne to _(40)Zr with individual element resolution and the high statistics needed to test models of cosmic-ray origins. SuperTIGER also makes exploratory measurements of the abundances of elements with 40 < Z ≤ 60 and measures the energy spectra of the more abundant elements for Z ≤ 30 from about 0.8 to 10 GeV/nucleon. This instrument is an enlarged and higher resolution version of the earlier TIGER instrument. It was designed to provide the largest geometric acceptance possible and to reach as high an altitude as possible, flying on a standard long-duration 1.11 million m^3 balloon. SuperTIGER was launched from Williams Field, McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on 2012 December 8, and made about 2.7 revolutions around the South Pole in 55 days of flight, returning data on over 50 × 10^6 cosmic-ray nuclei with Z ≥ 10, including ∼1300 with Z >29 and ∼60 with Z >49. Here, we describe the instrument, the methods of charge identification employed, the SuperTIGER balloon flight, and the instrument performance. © 2014 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2014 March 7; accepted 2014 April 22; published 2014 May 16. NASA supported this research under the ROSES 2007 APRA program under grants NNX09AC17G to Washington University in St. Louis and NNX09AC18G to Caltech, and JPL, and APRA07–0146 to NASA/GSFC. WU also received support from the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University. We thank the NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility, the NASA Balloon Program Office, and the NSF United States Antarctic Program for the excellent and highly professional efforts that resulted in the record long-duration balloon flight of SuperTIGER. We also gratefully acknowledge support from the Peggy and Steve Fossett Foundation for graduate student support (RPM) at Washington University. Published - 0004-637X_788_1_18.pdf
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