Citizen scientists help NASA study the solar eclipse
North American observers will witness the next total solar eclipse in less than two months as it crosses over the United States, Mexico and Canada. Rather than just watch the rare phenomenon, onlookers can join in on the fun as a citizen scientist.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, citizen scientists help make important scientific discoveries. Citizen science projects allow scientists to collaborate with the public, whether it’s discovering and reporting previously unknown comets or searching for solar jets — enigmatic bursts of energy from the sun.
Here are four ways to help NASA during the upcoming total solar eclipse:
1. Sunsketcher
Citizen scientists can use a cellphone to help measure the exact shape and size of the sun by taking a picture of an eclipse phenomenon called Baily’s Beads. To participate, users must download the Sunsketcher app. With mass participation, enough data could create a large database of images enabling scientists to map the sun when analyzed.
“The 2024 eclipse offers an unprecedented opportunity to measure the shape of the sun and so to infer its inner structure,” Gordon Emslie, principal investigator, said on the app’s website. “The Sunsketcher project will use smartphone observations by Citizen Scientists situated along the two-thousandmile-long eclipse path from Texas to Maine to reveal the precise shape of the solar disk.”
2. Eclipse Soundscapes
The Eclipse Soundscapes project offers multiple ways for people to support its scientific mission through roles such as apprentice, observer, data collector, data analyst or facilitator. Although participants can choose multiple positions, officials encourage completing the apprentice role first since it’s free, online and comes with a certificate upon completion of training.
3. Eclipse Megamovie
Organizers at Eclipse Megamovie hope to recruit volunteers with a range of skills, experience and knowledge from diverse backgrounds. In addition to scientists, researchers and enthusiasts, they’re looking for software engineers and data scientists with an experience in software engineering and data science, specifically databases, python coding and machine learning. Officials also want to recruit Spanish-speaking volunteers to help with recruitment and communication efforts in Spanishspeaking communities in the path of totality in Texas.
Citizen scientists will photograph images of the solar corona during the total solar eclipse. Once the images get collected, Eclipse Megamovie will use artificial intelligence to support analysis of the images to reveal the plasma transients within the collection of images. Citizen scientists will receive training on how to operate their digital single-lens reflex cameras to make sure they’re capturing significant scientific data.
4. DEB Initiative
Through the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast Initiative, a network of volunteer citizen scientists in North America will conduct coordinated solar observations leading up the 2024 total solar eclipse. Southern Illinois University Carbondale will lead the collaborative scientific effort where 81 DEB sites will upload images to an image server. Some observations sites will stream live video produced in partnership with SOLARSTEAM and NASA Edge during the April 8 total solar eclipse via eclipse.siu.edu.
Images from cameras and telescope systems plus data from the path of the totality will be collected from volunteer observers from Mexico, across the U.S. and in Canada. The DEB will “provide context observations for all of the 2024 eclipse experiments by showing the evolution of the white light coronal structures and the solar disk during the 90 minutes of totality throughout North America,” according to its website.
A total solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and earth completely blocking the face of the sun. The last total solar eclipse took place on Aug. 21, 2017. According to the National History Museum, solar eclipses happen anywhere from two to five times a year with total solar eclipses taking place every 18 months or so. A person’s ability to see the eclipse depends on their location in the world at the time of the event.