Citizen Science Presentations: AAS #244: June 10, 2024
AAS Summer Meeting #244 June 10-11, 2024
First Look at Citizen Science from the 8 April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse
June 10, 2024: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
"Citizen science" is research in which enthusiastic members of the public collaborate with professional scientists to collect or analyze data that cannot be gathered or evaluated in any other way.
On 8 April 2024, the Great North American Solar Eclipse treated tens of millions of people across Mexico, the U.S., and Canada to the experience of totality; hundreds of millions more witnessed a partial solar eclipse that day. Through a wide variety of citizen science initiatives, astronomers, atmospheric scientists, and other researchers engaged members of the public in observing the Sun’s photosphere, chromosphere, and corona as well as our planet’s response to the eclipse, not just in the atmosphere but also in the biosphere.
In this special session, leaders from numerous eclipse-related citizen science projects described their research goals, the types of data they collected, and the level of public engagement they achieved, as well as some preliminary results.
Angela Des Jardins: Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
Angela Des Jardins: Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
Angela Des Jardins: Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
For the recent annular and total solar eclipses, the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) immersed student teams in an innovative NASA-mission-like adventure in data acquisition and analysis through scientific ballooning. NEBP’s overarching science goal is to examine the atmospheric effects of the Moon’s cold, dark, daytime shadow and use the knowledge to further understand climate change. NEBP includes two learner-centered activity tracks – 1) atmospheric science and 2) engineering.
Angela Des Jardins is the director of Montana Space Grant Consortium and Montana NASA EPSCoR, and an Associate Research Professor at Montana State University.
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Marilé Colon Robles: GLOBE Eclipse
Angela Des Jardins: Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
Angela Des Jardins: Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
GLOBE Eclipse: Citizen Scientist Measurements of Atmospheric Changes during Astronomical Events: Energy from the Sun warms our planet, and changes in sunlight can also cause changes in temperature, clouds, and wind. What happens when the Sun is blocked by the Moon during an eclipse? The GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Program invited the general public to become citizen scientists and collect cloud and temperature observations during these astronomical events using the GLOBE Observer app. Before major solar eclipses, the special, limited-time Eclipse tool is added to the app to allow citizen scientists to submit air temperature data along with cloud observations.
Marilé Colón Robles is the project scientist for NASA GLOBE Clouds and an education outreach coordinator at NASA Langley Research Center
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Henry "Trae" Winter: Eclipse Soundscapes Project
Angela Des Jardins: Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project
Henry "Trae" Winter: Eclipse Soundscapes Project
Eclipse Soundscapes Project: Accessible Participatory Eclipse Science: The Eclipse Soundscapes Project is a NASA-funded participatory science investigation of how solar eclipses impact life on Earth. Using audio recording devices and other forms of multisensory observation, the project invites the general public to collect soundscapes data — advancing the field of soundscapes ecology and adding to a growing body of evidence that eclipses can be studied in a non-visual manner. During the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse the Eclipse Soundscapes Project had over 7190 participants from all across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada
Trae Winter is the co-founder of the Advanced Research in Inclusion and STEAM Accessibility (ARISA) Lab, an official NASA partner through NASA's Science Activation Program.
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Dawn Davies: The LightSound Project
Dawn Davies: The LightSound Project
Henry "Trae" Winter: Eclipse Soundscapes Project
The LightSound Project delivered 900 solar eclipse sonification devices, called LightSounds, to communities hosting solar eclipse events, allowing the blind and low-vision community to experience solar eclipses with sound. The device converts light to sound using an on-board light sensor and MIDI board to assign the light intensity values to instruments. The project is completely open source, with all instructions to build and use the device available online in English, Spanish, and French. To engage the public and help achieve the goal of constructing hundreds of devices, the LightSound Project ran several workshops across the country
Dawn Davies is Night Sky Program Manager at the Hill Country Alliance in Texas.
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Kate Russo: Piloting Project AWE
Dawn Davies: The LightSound Project
Kate Russo: Piloting Project AWE
Capturing the awe and wonder of solar eclipses through changes in our brainwaves: Piloting Project AWE: The totality experience is widely recognized as awe-inspiring, eliciting physical and emotional reactions that many find difficult to convey in words. Project Awe explores the feasibility of using biometric measures, specifically brainwaves, to objectively capture these reactions. A pilot study was undertaken during the annular solar eclipse (ASE) on October 14, 2023, in preparation for a future study during the total solar eclipse.
Dr. Russo is founder of Being In the Shadow and author of numerous white papers and books on community management of eclipses, as well as a clinical psychologist who studies the experience of awe.
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Gordon Emslie: SunSketcher
Dawn Davies: The LightSound Project
Kate Russo: Piloting Project AWE
SunSketcher: Precise Measurement of the Solar Shape via a Network of Smartphone Eclipse Observations: The shape of the solar limb is determined by sub-surface flows that reflect not only solar differential rotation, but also an assortment of other flow patterns associated with the 22-year solar cycle, the emergence of active regions, and so forth. The goal of the citizen science SunSketcher project is to measure the size and shape of the Sun to an unprecedented level of accuracy (a few parts per million), in order to constrain these flow fields.
Gordon Emslie is Professor, and SunSketcher Project Lead, at Western Kentucky University's Physics and Astronomy department.
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros: Eclipse Megamovie 2024: First Light Analysis
Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros: Eclipse Megamovie 2024: First Light Analysis
Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros: Eclipse Megamovie 2024: First Light Analysis
In 2024, the Eclipse MegaMovie was funded by NASA to leverage the lessons learned in 2017 to sharpen observational strategies and scientific goals while engaging public participants in heliophysics research with both datasets. As of April 14th, over 120 participants have uploaded a plethora of photographs, including calibration frames. In this presentation, we share the first results of HDR images across the path of totality from our analysis with the clear-skies corona dataset.
Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros is Associate Research Physicist at Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley.
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Christopher Mandrell: DEB Initiative
Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros: Eclipse Megamovie 2024: First Light Analysis
Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros: Eclipse Megamovie 2024: First Light Analysis
A significant part of the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast Initiative (DEB) was to establish a North American, volunteer based, citizen science, white light telescope network to observe the April 8th, 2024, total solar eclipse. The scientific goal of this part of DEB was to measure the acceleration of coronal plasma in the inner corona adding to what the group accomplished in 2017.
Christopher Mandrell is a Graduate Assistant in the Applied Physics program at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
Amir Caspi: Citizen CATE 2024
Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros: Eclipse Megamovie 2024: First Light Analysis
Amir Caspi: Citizen CATE 2024
The Citizen CATE 2024 next-generation experiment placed 35+ identical telescope teams along the path of totality during the total solar eclipse (TSE) on April 8th, 2024 to capture a 60-minute movie of the inner solar corona in polarized light. We recruited and trained 35+ teams of community participants ("citizen scientists") from cities along the eclipse path, who retained the equipment in their communities for future outreach, education, and public engagement activities.
Amir Caspi is a Senior Research Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and leader of the Citizen CATE project
Click here for the video, click here for the transcript, click here for the PDF slides.
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