Cosmic radiation detection by muon counting opens up an interesting avenue for the amateur observer. Muons are fundamental charged particles which are produced by the collision of cosmic rays with the outer part of the Earth’s atmosphere at around 15km. Muons are unstable and due to their high mass, are short lived. However, their relativistic velocity means that they can reach the Earth’s surface and are easily detectable. Advances in microelectronics and sensor technologies, and reductions in cost due to high sales volumes, means that instruments capable of detecting muons are now available to the enthusiast.

If your interest is data processing, extracting subtle anomalies from numbers, astrophysics, atmospheric physics, or solar activity; then there is plenty of scope for all of this with a muon detector. There is a very active forum at https://groups.io/g/muondetector where further information can be found.

Resources

Muon Detection – Andrew Thomas

Github repository for the files associated this this course can be found here

Python for Muons #4 – Presenting findings using Jupyter notebooks and the web. Rupert Powell on YouTube

Python for Muons #3 – Analysis & Charting muon data using python. Rupert Powell on You Tube

Python for Muons #2 – Reading muon data using python. Rupert Powell On You Tube

Python for Muons #1 – Connecting Raspberry Pi to a PC by Andrew Thomas & Richard Knott On You Tube

Associated Notes for Python for Muons #1 can be found here