•Andreas Kopmann, Hermann-Josef Mathes, Hartmut Gemmeke, Matthias Kleifges, Alexandre Menshikov und Denis Tcherniakhovski
Institut für Prozessdatenverarbeitung und Elektronik, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe

The Pierre Auger Collaboration started with the construction of the first hybrid detector in Argentina. In the final state this experiment will consist of a large array of Cerenkov water detectors and 30 fluorescence telescopes to observe fluorescence light of EAS (Extensive air shower) with energies above 10¹⁸ eV. Each telescope will be equipped with an independent trigger and readout system. The combination of fast hardware based pattern recognition and special software algorithms provide a trigger rate of a few events per hour.

Since October 2001 two of this camera systems are operational. They demonstrate the power of the realized concept. The actual implemented trigger algorithms and their efficiency as well as the first data are presented.