The Cosmic-Ray Extremely Distributed Observatory (CREDO) is a newly formed, global collaboration dedicated to observing and studying cosmic rays (CR) and cosmic-ray ensembles (CRE): groups of at least two CR with a common primary interaction vertex or the same parent particle. The CREDO program embraces testing known CR and CRE scenarios, and preparing to observe unexpected physics, it is also suitable for multi-messenger and multi-mission applications. Perfectly matched to CREDO capabilities, CRE could be formed both within classical models (e.g., as products of photon–photon interactions), and exotic scenarios (e.g., as results of decay of Super-Heavy Dark Matter particles). Their fronts might be significantly extended in space and time, and they might include cosmic rays of energies spanning the whole cosmic-ray energy spectrum, with a footprint composed of at least two extensive air showers with correlated arrival directions and arrival times. As the CRE are predominantly expected to be spread over large areas and, due to the expected wide energy range of the contributing particles, such a CRE detection might only be feasible when using all available cosmic-ray infrastructure collectively, i.e., as a globally extended network of detectors. Thus, with this review article, the CREDO Collaboration invites the astroparticle physics community to actively join or to contribute to the research dedicated to CRE and, in particular, to pool together cosmic-ray data to support specific CRE detection strategies.

We report multicolor optical imaging and polarimetry observations of the afterglow of the first TeV-detected gamma-ray burst (GRB), GRB 190114C, using the RINGO3 and MASTER II polarimeters. Observations begin 31 s after the onset of the GRB and continue until ∼7000 s postburst. The light curves reveal a chromatic break at ∼400–500 s, with initial temporal decay α = 1.669 ± 0.013 flattening to α ∼ 1 postbreak, which we model as a combination of reverse and forward shock components with magnetization parameter R _B ∼ 70. The observed polarization degree decreases from 7.7% ± 1.1% to 2%–4% 52–109 s postburst and remains steady at this level for the subsequent ∼2000 s at a constant position angle. Broadband spectral energy distribution modeling of the afterglow confirms that GRB 190114C is highly obscured (A _v,HG = 1.49 ± 0.12 mag; cm⁻²). We interpret the measured afterglow polarization as intrinsically low and dominated by dust —in contrast to the P > 10% measured previously for other GRB reverse shocks—with a small contribution from polarized prompt photons in the first minute. We test whether first- and higher-order inverse Compton scattering in a magnetized reverse shock can explain the low optical polarization and subteraelectronvolt emission but conclude that neither is explained in the reverse shock inverse Compton model. Instead, the unexpectedly low intrinsic polarization degree in GRB 190114C can be explained if large-scale jet magnetic fields are distorted on timescales prior to reverse shock emission.

We present the earliest astronomical observation of a high-energy neutrino error box of which the variability was discovered after high-energy-neutrino detection. The one robotic telescope of the MASTER global international networks automatically imaged the error box of the very high-energy-neutrino event IceCube-170922A. Observations were carried out in minutes after the IceCube-170922A neutrino event was detected by the IceCube observatory at the South Pole. MASTER found the blazar TXS 0506+056 to be in the off-state after one minute and then switched to the on-state no later than two hours after the event. The effect is observed at a 50σ significance level. We also present own a unique 16 yr light curve of blazar TXS 0506+056 (518 data set).

This review considers synchronous and follow-up MASTER Global Robotic Net optical observations of high energy astrophysical phenomena such as fast radio bursts (FRB), gamma-ray bursts (including prompt optical emission polarization discovery), gravitational-wave events, detected by LIGO/VIRGO (including GW170817 and independent Kilonova discovery), high energy neutrino sources (including the detection of IC-170922A progenitor) and others. We report on the first large optical monitoring campaign of the closest at that moment radio burster FRB 180916.J0158+65 simultaneously with a radio burst. We obtained synchronous limits on the optical flux of the FRB 180916.J0158+65 and FRB 200428 (soft gamma repeater SGR 1935+2154) (The CHIME/FRB Collaboration, Nature 2020, 587) at 155093 MASTER images with the total exposure time equal to 2,705,058 s, i.e., 31.3 days. It follows from these synchronous limitations that the ratio of the energies released in the optical and radio ranges does not exceed 4 × 10⁵. Our optical monitoring covered a total of 6 weeks. On 28 April 2020, MASTER automatically following up on a Swift alert began to observe the galactic soft gamma repeater SGR 1935+2154 experienced another flare. On the same day, radio telescopes detected a short radio burst FRB 200428 and MASTER-Tavrida telescope determined the best prompt optical limit of FRB/SGR 1935+2154. Our optical limit shows that X-ray and radio emissions are not explained by a single power-law spectrum. In the course of our observations, using special methods, we found a faint extended afterglow in the FRB 180916.J0158+65 direction associated with the extended emission of the host galaxy.

The physical motivations and advantages of the new gamma-observatory TAIGA (Tunka Advanced Instrument for cosmic ray physics and Gamma Astronomy) is presented. The TAIGA array is a complex, hybrid detector for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy for energies from a few TeV to several PeV as well as for cosmic ray studies from 100 TeV to several EeV. The TAIGA will include the wide angle Cherenkov array TAIGA-HiSCORE with ~5 km² area, a net of 16 I ACT telescopes (with FOV of about 10x10 degree), muon detectors with a total area of up to 2000-3000 m² and the radio array Tunka-Rex.