Experiment NA57 studies the production of strange and multi-strange baryons
and antibaryons in ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions at the SPS
. The principal aim of NA57 is to investigate the existence of an onset for
the strangeness enhancement effect at the variation of the energy and cent
rality (i.e. number of participants) of the nucleus-nucleus collisions. The
experiment was successfully installed and commissioned in 1997.