Every one to two years, the solar system aligns just enough for the moon to cast a shadow over part of Earth’s surface and block the sun. That is a solar eclipse. In 2017, people from all over the United States flocked to see it. “Great American Total Eclipse”which was first observed in a continental state. Since 1979. Now, eclipse trackers and citizen scientists across North America are preparing for the next big event. Annular solar eclipse on October 14, 2023 and Total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024.This will be the last solar eclipse seen in the continental United States. Until August 2045more than 20 years apart.
People like solar eclipses because of the novelty of seeing the sun disappear during the day, which is so cool.However, both of these phenomena are serious problems and Opportunity: Called by a group of radio astronomers and citizen scientists radio jove aims to use the upcoming solar eclipse for science. NASA’s “Helio Big Ear”.
Radio JOVE “originally began as an education and outreach project to help students, teachers and the public participate in science,” explains the project’s co-founders. chuck higgins, an astronomer at Middle Tennessee State University. The project has been running since his late 1990s, when it began at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We are now trying to focus on science and encourage people to become citizen scientists.”
As its name suggests, Radio JOVE originally focused on the planet Jupiter. “Coincidentally, it turns out that the same radio wavelengths we use to observe Jupiter are also useful for observing the Sun. ” thomas ashcraftI’m a citizen scientist from New Mexico who has been making observations on Radio JOVE since 2001. After the Great American Eclipse in 2017, its members became more involved in heliophysics, the study of the Sun.
[Related: Total eclipses aren’t that rare—and you’ve probably missed a bunch of them]
When energy emanates from the Sun and travels to Earth, it interacts with Earth’s atmosphere. In particular, sunlight creates a layer of ionized particles. ionosphere. Radio waves coming from the sun have to pass through these particles above us. Communication technology uses this layer to reflect radio waves and transmit them over long distances.
Ionospheric plasma changes significantly between day and night. When the sun hits this layer, the particles split into ions. When the sun is gone, those ions settle down. Similar changes occur in the short term during a solar eclipse, when most of the sun’s light is blocked. Radio JOVE hopes to deepen our understanding of the ionosphere by bringing together amateur observers to precisely measure these fluctuations.
To that end, Radio JOVE equips citizen scientists across the country with miniature radio receivers and trains them to observe radio waves from the Earth’s ionosphere.What the project offers Starter kit with some assembly required The cost is approximately $200, and new volunteers are supported by an entire team of experts and experienced observers.
[Related: The best US parks for eclipse chasers to see October’s annularity]
Currently, they are preparing participants for a full day of viewing during October’s annular solar eclipse. Project members are already collecting data to get a baseline of the sun’s influence on normal days, which they plan to compare with future eclipse data. And this is just a taste before the big event of next year’s total solar eclipse. “The 2023 annular solar eclipse will be used as a training, learning, and testing experience to obtain the highest quality data for the 2024 total solar eclipse,” Higgins wrote. American Geophysical Union Conference Overview.
Citizen science projects like Radio JOVE not only collect valuable data, but also engage new participants in NASA’s scientific community. Anyone interested in science can participate. If Radio JOVE doesn’t suit your interests, NASA has it for you. A long list of other opportunities. For example, if you are a amateur radio operator, you can participate in: HamSCIwe are also planning to observe solar eclipses in the future.
“NASA’s Radio JOVE citizen science project has allowed me to further my lifelong interest in astronomy,” said John Cox, a Radio JOVE citizen scientist from South Carolina. I am. NASA press release. “A whole new part of the electromagnetic spectrum opened up to me.”
