Forget Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds, or Siri; the latest app uses particle detection to measure particles of light entering Earth’s atmosphere as cosmic rays. 

Supernovas produce radioactive particles that enter the atmosphere as cosmic rays. This new Android app detects and measures photons, which are particles of light emitting electric charges. When these charges hit the silicon chips in smartphone cameras, the amount is recorded and the results analyzed.

The app was developed by assistant professor of physics Justin Vanderbroucke of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to Vanderbroucke, he wasn’t setting out to break records or invent a new creation. “It was just one of those hobbies that happened to work out,” he said in a news release.

Vanderbroucke’s project, the Distributed Electronic Cosmic-ray Observatory (DECO), was funded in part from the American Physical Society, the Knight Foundation and the Simon-Strauss Foundation. The app was originally intended to encourage high school students to be interested in science.

“It would be great to get students and the public interested in gathering data and understanding the particles around them, things they ordinarily don’t get a chance to see,” Vandenbroucke said.

The app is created by placing a piece of duct tape over the smartphone camera lens and then lay the phone screen-up on a flat surface. DECO photographs through the duct tape every few minutes, capturing electric charges from photons. These results can then be analyzed in class.

Although scientists have traditionally used lower-tech methods for tracking cosmic rays, the International Space Station has a $2 billion cosmic ray detector on board. This is the most expensive cosmic ray detector ever made, and can track numerous rays from all parts of the galaxy.

While the app is currently only for Android, Vanderbroucke is considering designing the app for other mobile devices so more people can participate in science.