Visualise your Data
Cosmic Radiation
Primary cosmic rays are extraterrestrial, energised, subatomic particles. Majority of the cosmic rays that we detect on Earth originate from the Sun. While cosmic rays can be a combination of neutrons and protons, most of them are individual protons. Specifically, 89% of these are hydrogen atom protons.
When these primary cosmic rays come into contact with the Earth’s atmosphere, some of them will collide with the atmospheric, air atoms. When this happens, the atom shatters, producing secondary cosmic rays. The debris from this collision continues to interact and collide with the atmospheric atoms as it travels down towards the Earth. The effect of this, is a shower of particles, which we recognise as secondary, ionising radiation. Typically, these particles are muons and gamma rays.
These gamma rays are what our detectors measure. In particular, your detector will measure the number of counts per minute. This refers to the number of gamma rays that the detector picks up during a one-minute interval. Additionally, the number of counts per five seconds and the total number of counts is also measured.
The atmosphere protects us from a lot of primary cosmic rays. Since the number of atmospheric, air atoms between the cosmic rays and Earth decreases as altitude above the ground increases, radiation levels will also increase with altitude.
Visualising the Radiation Rate on your Flight
Follow the steps below to visualise your raw data.
@cosmiconair@gmail.com
Step 1: Download your Data
If you have a detector and have used it to collected your own data, the first step is to download this raw data onto the device on which you will be running the code. You can do this by removing the micro SD card from the detector, insert it into your PC or laptop and copy the raw data file into the same folder that you download the next piece of code into.
If you do not have you own data, or would like to compare your measurements to a demo data set, we have provided some example data on the left for you to download.
All of our code was written in Python, so if you want to download and run the from an IDE or terminal, make sure that you have Python version 3 or later installed. You can refer to the link on the left to download the latest version of Python.
Most of our pieces of code import various Python packages. You will need to have these installed before running the respective piece of code. The link on the left will take you to some Python documentation that will guide you through how to do this.
Step 2: Send Us your Data
We are currently expanding our database and would greatly appreciate your help with this. We are still in the process of developing an automatic upload system. In the meantime, we would be grateful if you could email us @cosmiconair@gmail.com with:
1. Your Name
2. Your Raw Data
3. Your Flight Number and Date
Step 3: Access the Code
Click on the button below to download this section’s code directly onto your device. You will need to store this code in the same folder as your raw data.
Step 4: Plot the Data
Now that you have the raw data and code downloaded , all you need to do make a few adjustments specific to your data.
To do this, you will need to change three things:
Change the name of ‘file’ to match the name of your raw data file. (Eg: file = ‘your_file_name’)
Change the x-axis limits. These limits depend upon your specific data.We use them to avoid plotting any radiation detected before take-off (the steep, vertical increase) or after landing (the steep, vertical decrease). Start by changing these limits in multiples of 1000. (Eg: plt.xlim(times[1000], times[11000]) may change to plt.xlim(times[4000], times[10000]) for another data set.
Change the y-axis limits to focus in on your particular data range . For most data sets, you generally will not have to change these default limits. However, if there was a solar flare during your flight, the y-axis data range will far larger, and you will need to increase the maximum limit. You will know this is the case, if your graph only shows the take-off and landing segments.
