NASA has teamed up with Western Kentucky University to develop an app to track Aprilâs solar eclipse on a cell phone â and they are looking for âcitizen scientistsâ 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.
âAs 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,â said WKU Computer Science major Starr May explained to WKUâs 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.
âWhat 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,â 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 whatâs known as âBailey Beadsâ â flashes of light emitted as the sunlight passes through the moonâs lunar mountains.
Scientists know the moonâs 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 âthe Sun’s oblateness to an accuracy of a few parts in a millionâ for the first time, according to the appâs website.
The app is funded by a grant from the NASA Heliophysics Innovation in Technology and Science (HITS) program.
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