TAMBO
Español
The Colca Canyon seen from its rim

Quick facts

The observatory in a dozen lines.

  1. 01TAMBO stands for Tau Air-shower Mountain-Based Observatory.
  2. 02It will detect tau neutrinos with energies between 1 PeV and 1 EeV.
  3. 03The nominal array is 5,000 plastic scintillator units, each about 1 m², spaced 150 m apart on a triangular grid.
  4. 04The candidate site is the Colca Valley in the Peruvian Andes — about 1.5 km deep, with sides about 4.5 km apart.
  5. 05The surrounding rock gives over 4 km of natural shielding against atmospheric muons.
  6. 06Every neutrino TAMBO detects will likely be of cosmic origin.
  7. 07About 6 extragalactic neutrinos are expected per decade conservatively, and more than 20 in optimistic scenarios.
  8. 08Directions are reconstructed with sub-degree angular resolution.
  9. 09The detection units use well-understood, low-cost scintillator technology that scales with the size of the array.
  10. 10The collaboration includes 28 institutions in 11 countries, with a strong Peruvian core.

Source: TAMBO: A Deep-Valley Neutrino Observatory, Nature Astronomy (2026).