CR model comparison. Top panels: A visual comparison between PlatoSim (left) and CosmiX (right), shown for a small 150² pixel sub-field. The images are generated using a cycle time of 25 s, a CR hit rate of 100 events s⁻¹ cm⁻² (corresponding to solar maximum), and a CR trail length for PlatoSim of up to 300 pixel. As input for CosmiX, we used a unidirectional 55 MeV proton beam and a 40 µm Si pixel volume. Bottom panel: Number distribution of total charge deposit per event. The black dots show the measurements from the proton irradiation test campaign on a PLATO flight model CCD at 203 K (Prod’homme et al. 2018). The blue solid line is a best fit model of PlatoSim’s skew-normal distribution to the test data and the blue shaded region is the 2σ confidence interval. The first three data points (pink squares) were excluded in the fit as they originates from secondary δ-electrons from the setup. The best fit parameters (ψ_CR,ω_CR,α_CR) = (5232 ± 76, 3842 ± 197, 6 ± 1) were used to produce the PlatoSim simulation above.