Bravo to our EHHS student eclipse team! Along with 81 citizen science teams across the path of totality in North America, our team captured moment-by-moment images during the eclipse of the Sun’s inner corona—a phenomenon observable solely during a total solar eclipse.
These high dynamic range (HDR) images were uploaded in real time to the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast (DEB) website, providing moment-by-moment viewing opportunities for visitors as the eclipse traversed observation sites along its path. The DEB team is now processing and analyzing the image files from all the teams to advance understanding of the intricate interactions between the sun’s visible surface and its corona.
This collaborative effort, facilitated by simultaneous observations from various locations inside and outside of totality, holds promise in unraveling the complexities of our solar system and nurturing scientific curiosity and engagement among young learners, especially young women, in STEM disciplines.
The EHHS team’s participation in the DEB initiative is in conjunction with a Einstein’s Incredible Universe (EIU) grant awarded to Dr. Annette Kratcoski (Research Center for Educational Technology), and Dr. Lisa Borgerding (Teaching, Leadership, and Curriculum Studies).
Led by Southern Illinois University Carbondale, the DEB initiative provided training and equipment so that a network of citizen scientist teams across North America could capture images during the April 8, eclipse, providing valuable data for scientific study.
Einstein’s Incredible Universe is produced by Cosmic Picture and executed in partnership with the Great Lakes Science Center, the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast (DEB) Initiative, Southern Illinois University (SIU) Carbondale, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and educational research firm Rockman, et al. It is funded by the National Science Foundation with specific project components also funded by NASA.
--Annette Kratcoski