Measurement of cosmic ray elemental composition from the CAKE balloon experiment

CAKE (Cosmic Abundances below Knee Energies) was a prototype balloon experiment for the determination of the charge spectra and abundances of the primary cosmic rays (CR) with Z > 10. It was a passive instrument made of layers of CR39® and Lexan®/Makrofol® nuclear track detectors; it had a geometric acceptance of ∼0.7 m2 sr for Fe nuclei. Here, the scanning and analysis strategies, the algorithms used for the off-line filtering and for the tracking in automated mode of the primary cosmic rays are presented, together with the resulting CR charge distribution and their abundances.