Monthly Weather Report for NearSys Station

Our winter weather has been a bit crazy, to say the least. So I've decided to start recording daily temperatures and precipitation. At the end of each month, I'll post the results.

Monitoring weather is an easy amateur science project and I encourage everyone to do so.

Precipitation for January 2017

Daily High and Low Temperature for January 2017

Cosmic Ray Flux with Coincidence Counter Facing North-South

Another 24 hours of collected data. This time the geiger counters were turned facing North and South.

The mean flux was 0.028 counts per ten seconds per square inch. That's a small decrease from the last two days (0.031 and 0.031). The standard deviation was 0.191 and that's also a bit smaller than yesterday (0.207).

There was a detection of 182 cosmic ray strikes at six standard deviations above the mean (compared to 151 the day before when the geiger counters faced east-west). There was only one strike detected with a count greater than 13 standard deviations above the mean (this compared favorably with a single strike at 12 standard deviations above the mean the day before).

The percentage of strikes was 2.1%, which is 0.4% less than the day before.

I have to conclude that the azimuth the geiger counters face is not significant. Detecting cosmic rays is best when the geiger counters are aligned vertically.

Cosmic Ray Flux with a Coincidence Counter facing east-west

Just finished formatting the data from the latest cosmic ray monitoring session. On the 27th and 28th, the geiger counters were oriented east-west and the Coincidence Counter was connected to prevent the PICAXE-14 datalogger from counting radiation strikes unless both geiger counters detected it together.

There's virtually no difference between the cosmic ray flux between north-south and east-west. Today's mean flux was 0.033 counts per 10 seconds per square inch (compared to 0.031 the day before). The standard deviation was identical to yesterday's at 0.207 counts per 10 seconds per square inch.

There was a total of 151 detected strikes. This apears smaller than yesterday's, but it's in line with it since cosmic rays were monitored for six hours less.

The only significant difference is in the number of larger strikes detected. Only one large strike was detected this time compared to five the day before. I will need to get fresh batteries and test this again to see if it's a fluke. It would make sense seeing more cosmic rays from the North since that points to were Earth's magnetic field would try to direct cosmic rays to. But just because it makes sense doesn't mean that it's correct.

UAVSonde for NearSys Station, 28 January 2017

The NearSys UAV Sky Crane completed a new UAVSonde mission around 1:00 PM on the 28th. Below is the results from the mission.

Altitude 2326 feet
Air Temperature 26 *F
Relative Humidity (too cold)
Air Pressure 1016.4 mb

Altitude 2634 feet
Air Temperature 22*F
Relative Humidity (too cold)
Air Pressure 1016.1 mb

An inversion is building in the valley, but not showing evidence over NearSys Station at a change of altitude of 308 feet.

Cosmic Ray Flux with Coincidence Counter (oriented horizontally north)

During the last 24 hours, the geiger counters were turned to face North. Only radiation traveling horizontally from the North or south could trigger the coincidence counter. And boy what a difference that made.

Cosmic rays were only detected 2.35% of the time. The mean flux was only 0.031 counts per 10 seconds per square inch. The standard deviation was 0.207 counts per 10 seconds per square inch.

When oriented horizontally, there's only 10.3% the number of cosmic rays as there is in the vertical direction. The mean flux is only 8.9% and the standard deviation is 30.4%. I suspect the amount of standard deviation is an artifact of the very low cosmic ray flux from the horizontal direction.

Below is a table of the count and their standard deviations.

STD-DEV.      Counts
6.                     199
12.                   5

Second Data of Counting Cosmic Rays with a Coincidence Counter at NearSys Station

Coincidence  data has been compiled for a second day. This time, the mean count was 0.350 counts per 10 seconds per square inch and the standard deviation 0.682 counts per 10 seconds per square inch. That puts the mean count 5.6% lower and the standard deviation 3.0 % lower. The ratio between mean count and standard deviation was was 0.51 yesterday and 0.53 today. The percentage of cosmic ray detection was 23.1% last night (versus 24.2% the day before).

Below is the table of cosmic ray counts per standard deviation.

STD-DEV     Strikes Exceeding
3                    242
5                    18
7                    2

Other than more detections overall, detecting two strikes at 7 s.d. above the mean last night is more than detected the night before.
 

Cosmic Ray Monitoring Station with Coincidence Counter at NearSys Station

The first day's data is in. The Coincidence Counter detects less background radiation and only detects radiation approaching the geiger counters from a vertical direction. As I understand it, this configuration is primarily detecting muons, a subatomic product of cosmic ray impacts with molecules in the atmosphere.

The number of strikes detected was 1,901 out of 7,842 chances (or 24.2% of the time). The average count was 0.371 counts per 10 seconds per square inch. The standard deviation was 0.703 counts per 10 seconds per square inch. Because of the low count and high standard deviation, the table of counts exceeding specific standard deviations is formatted a little differently than for the prior configuration of the Cosmic Ray Monitoring Station.

STDEV     Cosmic Ray Strikes Exceeding
2.               260
4.               21