Saturday, March 18, 2023

Capturing Cosmic Rays with DSLR Nikon D7500

I read an article (cosmic rays) on facebook on capturing of cosmic rays using a DLSR. I was wondering if I could reproduce this at home using my Nikon D7500 with CMOS sensor. I set up my Nikon  (see settings) and found some "strikes" in my images which I believe could be linked to cosmic rays and even Muons.


Muons are part of the secundary cosmic rays still having huge energy up to 4GeV. We can expect 1 muon count/cm2/min at sea level. Having a APS-C sony sensor and planning for 10min exposure, this would mean about 30 hits. When analyzing my pictures I see a lot of dots of which some are hot spots. I counted about 40 counts on two images without the hotspots.


The double rings on the image are identified as hotspots. 
To compare, the energy of photons are 4x10exp-19 Joule (3.5eV), muons have an energy (when reaching Earth) of 6.4x10exp-10 Joule (4GeV) or 1.600.000.000 higher. 

Setting:
- Nikon D7500, without lens, but with cap and installed in a carton box
- Camera and thus sensor, horizontal positioned
- Lights: 12x600s, ISO3200
- Software : N.I.N.A. , APP, CS4

Some literature :
- Catching Cosmic Rays with DSLR.