Aurorasaurus is a
citizen science
Citizen science (CS) (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted with participation from the public (who are sometimes re ...
project which tracks
auroras through
crowdsourced observations from a
mobile app and
social media, namely
Twitter and
Facebook.
Development
Aurorasaurus was created by
Liz MacDonald, a
space physicist Space physics, also known as solar-terrestrial physics or space-plasma physics, is the study of plasmas as they occur naturally in the Earth's upper atmosphere ( aeronomy) and within the Solar System. As such, it encompasses a far-ranging number of ...
at
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...
in Greenbelt, Maryland, after she noticed a large amount of tweets about auroras during a 2011 solar storm that produced red auroras visible from Alabama.
With Goddard scientist Nathan Case, MacDonald created a real-time map that displays the location of tweets that talk about auroras and have
geolocation data.
Aurorasaurus has been supported by
NASA and the
National Science Foundation.
It has been developed through a collaboration between NASA, the non-profit New Mexico Consortium, Pennsylvania State University, and the company Science Education Solutions.
Usage
Aurorasaurus contains a real-time map that displays the location of tweets that talk about auroras and have
geolocation data.
Users then verify if the tweets indicate a sighting.
Aurorasaurus also plots a "view-line" onto the map which shows users the predicted area in which they can see the aurora according to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's aurora forecast model OVATION Prime.
Once enough users report a sighting in an area or around the view-line, a notification is sent to other users in the local area.
Hundreds of citizen science observations collected by the Aurorasaurus team from March to April 2015 showed that more people reported seeing auroras closer to the
equator
The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can als ...
than modeled by OVATION Prime.
In 2016,
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
information scientists explored how Aurorasaurus could be used as an
early warning system for
emergency responder
A certified first responder is a person who has completed a course and received certification in providing pre-hospital care for medical emergencies. Certified individuals should have received much more instruction than someone who is trained ...
s.
See also
*
Atypical auroras
References
External links
*
* {{cite web , url= https://soundcloud.com/astrokatie/abc-melbourne-local-radio-space-chat-with-casey-bennetto , publisher= ABC , work= Interview , first= Casey , last= Bennetto , title= Astrophysicist Dr. Katie Mack speaks about "Steve" on local Melbourne radio , date= April 25, 2017 , format= Podcast , ref=no
Citizen science
Atmospheric optical phenomena