The MEV project: Design and testing of a new high-resolution telescope for muography of Etna Volcano

The MEV project aims at developing a muon telescope expressly designed for the muography of Etna Volcano. In particular, one of the active craters in the summit area of the volcano would be a suitable target for this experiment. A muon tracking telescope with high imaging resolution was built and tested during 2017. The telescope is a tracker based on extruded scintillating bars with WLS fibers and featuring an innovative read-out architecture. It is composed of 3×1 m2XY planes; the angular resolution does not exceeds 0.4 msr and the total angular aperture is about ±45∘. A special effort concerned the design of mechanics and electronics in order to meet the requirements of a detector capable to work in a hostile environment such as the top of a tall volcano, at a far distance from any facility. The test phase started in January 2017 and ended successfully at the end of July 2017. An extinct volcanic crater (the Monti Rossi, in the village of Nicolosi, about 15 km from Catania) was the target of the measurement. The detector acquired data for about 120 days and the preliminary results are reported in this work.