The following images show several examples of the lateral distribution of Cherenkov light of air showers. Click on any of these images to view a larger version of it. On these larger images you can click on any point to see what an ideal telescope of 100 m 2 mirror area would see at that point. Note that extinction would reduce in particular the rings seen in the lateral distributions of the proton showers which are produced high in the atmosphere.
All showers are vertical.
The observation is assumed to be at a height of 2200 m. For efficiency reasons, Cherenkov photons were calculated in bunches of up to 10. In the lateral distributions white pixels correspond to 80 or more photons per m 2 in the wavelength range 300-450 nm.