[Aavso-photometry] Cosmic Rays

[Ben Davies]

I looked at your mexdev image. ... there are a lot of low angle CR's. 
Not every bright thing you see is a CR. The vast majority of those 
single points look to me like shot noise from under-corrected hot 
pixels.... So you may be sitting near something radioactive---that's no 
joke. Are you in Colorado? Got any other ideas?
 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hello Michael,

I'm in San Francisco, but who knows?

The single, seemingly symmetrical, points you see on the jpeg are really 
not symmetrical.  If you trace them back to the originating image, they 
are linelike, about 3 pixels thick, with pixel values (to take one 
example) like this
125(noise)   176   1066   506   421   283   288   134(noise)

What I suspect, is that I am seeing low level cosmic rays that go 
unnoticed in an image just because they are not big and bright.  I 
expect my flux levels to be what anyone will see.

The idea that I am sitting near something radioactive needs to be tested.
I will go down to San Jose soon and make the same test at the same time, 
7-12pm pacific std time.  That of course will not eliminate the camera 
itself as a source.

Ben
http://ben.davies.net/cosmicrays1.htm

send me the ftp location and I'll send you the whole lot to look at.  
Your experienced eye will probably be able to sort something out.