The elemental abundances of hydrogen through nickel in the low energy cosmic rays

The relative abundances of the elements H through Ni in the galactic cosmic rays have been measured in the energy range 70-280 MeV/nucleon with the University of Chicago cosmic ray telescope on board the satellite IMP-8 from January 1973 to September 1978. Cosmic ray source abundances have been derived by extrapolating the measured composition back to the source. A key factor in the propagation calculation is the use of a pathlength distribution and a solar modulation level shown to be consistent with the secondary to primary ratios and their energy dependence below about 1 GeV/n.