NESTOR - A NEUTRINO PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS UNDERWATER LABORATORY FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN

An underwater neutrino astrophysics laboratory, to be located in the international waters off the Southwest of Greece, near the town of Pylos is now under construction. In the last two years a group of physicists from Greece and Russia have carried out two demonstration experiments in 4km deep water, counting muons and verifying the adequacy of the deep sea site. Plans are presented for a 100,000 m2 high energy neutrino detector composed of a hexagon of hexagonal towers, with 1176 optical detector units. A progress report is given and the physics potential of a single tower with 168 phototubes (currently under construction) is described

NESTOR: a status report

NESTOR is an underwater neutrino astrophysics laboratory to be located in the international waters of the southwest of Greece. The first phase of this experiment is the construction and deployment of one hexagonal tower consisting of 168 optical modules, with effective area of 20000m(2) for E greater than or equal to TeV neutrinos. Over the past few years detailed studies of the site have been carried out while many tests have been performed. The current status of the preparation of the experiment and the future plans will be presented