NASA, in collaboration with Western Kentucky University, has developed an app to track April’s solar eclipse on your phone. And NASA is looking for “citizen scientists” to take photos of space scenes for research.
of sun sketcher appDesigned by WKU students, this tool allows volunteers to easily record events and scientists to compile the photos into a database to create maps of the sun. WKBO reported.
“As long as you are in a place where you can see totality, and you can observe totality on your phone for about 30 seconds or more, you are welcome to use the app,” Star May, a WKU computer science major, told the WKU Board of Governors. explained. Regent’s on Friday.
Sunsketcher is currently available for free on iPhone and Android, and provides users with a tutorial on how to use the app after downloading.
Users within the total path from Texas to Maine on April 8, just before the solar eclipse, can simply place their phone on a stand or tripod, point their back camera toward the solar eclipse, and turn on the app. Masu. The phone will do the rest.
“There are 101 photos taken of the whole thing, before and after it, so you get one photo in the center totality and 50 photos on either side of it,” said Andrea Florence, WKU computer science junior. said.
The images were then uploaded to WKU servers, where the researchers analyzed what are known as “Bailey beads,” the flashes of light emitted when sunlight passes through the moon’s mountains. We hope to be able to determine the desired shape.
Scientists know a lot about the moon’s surface, but they still don’t know the ultra-precise shape of the sun, whose surface is constantly changing.
According to the app’s website, the SunSketcher project aims to measure the sun’s oblateness for the first time “to an accuracy of a few millionths of a percent.”
This app is funded by a grant from. NASA Heliophysics Innovation in Technology and Science (HITS) Program.
