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Confirmation of secondary cosmic ray flux enhancement during the total lunar eclipse of 10 December 2011

2013; Wiley; Volume: 118; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/2013ja019007

2169-9402

Anil Raghav, Ankush Bhaskar, Virendra Yadav, Nitinkumar Bijewar, Chintamani Pai, Ashish Koli, Nilam Navale, Gurinderpal Singh, Nitin Dubey, Sushant Pawar, Pradnya Parab, Gandhali Narvankar, Vaibhav Rawoot, Vikas Rawat, Satish Borse, Nagnath Garad, Carl Rozario, Nitin Kaushal, Shailendrakumar Tiwari, M. R. Press,

Astro and Planetary Science

Temporal variation of secondary cosmic rays (SCR) flux was measured during the total lunar eclipse on December 10, 2011 and the subsequent full moon on January 8, 2012. The measurements were done at Department of Physics, University of Mumbai, Mumbai (Geomagnetic latitude: 10.6 N), India using NaI (Tl) scintillation detector by keeping energy threshold of 200 KeV. The SCR flux showed approximately 8.1% enhancement during the lunar eclipse as compared to the average of pre- and post-eclipse periods. Weather parameters (temperature and relative humidity) were continuously monitored and their correlations with temporal variation in SCR flux were examined. The influences of geomagnetic field, interplanetary parameters and tidal effect on SCR flux were considered. Qualitative analysis of SCR flux variation indicates that the known factors affecting SCR flux fail to explain observed enhancement during the eclipse. This enhancement during lunar eclipse and widely reported decrease during solar eclipses may unravel hitherto unnoticed factors modulating SCR flux.