This program was initially created for the Qube2Space contest.
It analyzes the frames of a video taken with a blacked out CMOS camera sensor and detects cosmic rays that hit the sensor.
Because of the short life span of these particles, only a small precentage reach the earths surface:
aproximately 1 muon per minute per cm3.
The scope of the contest was to build a payload that would be loaded on a rocket in order to take different measurements at high altitudes. Our goal wwas to check the efficiency of using a camera sensor as an accessible way of detecting cosmic rays by comparing the measurements taken at high altitudes using this method with the expected values observed using specialised sensors.
The brightness and frequency of each pixel is taken into consideretion in order to minimize the errors caused by malfunctions in the sensor such as hot pixels. For the best results, the video should be saved in RAW format.
More information about this concept and inspiration sources:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141933120303306
https://britastro.org/2023/capturing-cosmic-rays-with-a-digital-camera
http://cosmicpi.org/posts