Southern hemisphere observations of a 10x18 eV cosmic ray source near the direction of the Galactic Centre

We report on an analysis of data from the southern hemisphere SUGAR cosmic ray detector. We confirm the existence of an excess of 1018 eV cosmic rays from a direction close to the Galactic Centre, first reported by the AGASA group. We find that the signal is consistent with that from a point source, and we find no evidence for an excess of cosmic rays coming from the direction of the Galactic Centre itself. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V.