NASA looking for ‘citizen scientists’ to photograph solar eclipse to help map the sun
NASA has teamed up with Western Kentucky University to develop an app to track April’s solar eclipse on a cell phone — and they are looking for “citizen scientists” to snap photos of the cosmic spectacle for research.
The SunSketcher app, designed by WKU students, makes it easy for volunteers to record the event so scientists can compile the photos into a database in an effort to try and map the sun, WKBO reported.
“As long as you are in a place where you will see totality, where your phone can observe totality for more than about 30 seconds, you are more than welcome to use the app,” said WKU Computer Science major Starr May explained to WKU’s Board of Regents on Friday.
Sunsketcher, which is available free now for iPhones and Androids, takes users through a tutorial on how to use the app once downloaded.
Just before the eclipse, users within its path of totality from Texas to Maine on April 8 simply need to put their phone on a stand or tripod, face their back camera to the eclipse and turn on the app.
The phone does the rest.
“What it does is it takes 101 photos throughout totality, and before and after, so you have one photo during center totality and 50 on either side of it,” WKU Computer Science Junior, Andrea Florence said.
The images are then uploaded to a WKU server where researchers hope they can determine the definitive shape of the sun by analyzing what’s known as “Bailey Beads” — flashes of light emitted as the sunlight passes through the moon’s lunar mountains.
Everything to know about the 2024 solar eclipse
- The solar eclipse will take place Monday, April 8, blocking the sun for over 180 million people in its path.
- The eclipse will expand from Mexico’s Pacific Coast across North America, hitting 15 US states and pulling itself all the way to the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
- New Yorkers will experience the solar eclipse just after 2 p.m. Monday.
- A huge explosion on the sun, known as a coronal mass ejection, is anticipated, according to experts. This happens when massive particles from the sun are hurled out into space, explains Ryan French of the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.
- To avoid serious injury to the eyes, it is necessary to view the event through proper eyewear like eclipse glasses, or a handheld solar viewer, during the partial eclipse phase before and after totality.
- The next total solar eclipse will take place on Aug. 12, 2026, and totality will be visible to those in Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and a small slice of Portugal.
Scientists know the moon’s surface very well but still do not have a super precise shape of the sun, where the surface changes constantly.
The Sunsketcher project hopes to measure “the Sun’s oblateness to an accuracy of a few parts in a million” for the first time, according to the app’s website.
The app is funded by a grant from the NASA Heliophysics Innovation in Technology and Science (HITS) program.