AMON: An Eye on the Universe

Among the creation gods of ancient Egypt, Ra, the Sun God, was master of the physical, concrete world. Amon represented all of the subtle or unseen elements of creation. Together they formed a composite god called Amon-Ra meaning "hidden light." That, says Penn State physicist Miles Smith, is what the AMON project seeks to reveal-subtle aspects of the universe that have never been observed before. AMON stands for Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network. Its mission is to form a network of high-energy observatories across the globe that will search for previously unseen astrophysical signals and send alerts to more traditional telescopes in order to corroborate the possible celestial events. Until the early 20th Century, astronomers relied almost exclusively on visible light to view the sky. Their telescopes, though steadily increasing in power, were no different in this respect from the ones used by Galileo in 1610.