The volunteer meeting will take place on Monday, December 18th at 5pm. We are also launching our office hours beginning that day, so we will be available 30 minutes before the start of the meeting to answer questions and chat about the project. This meeting in particular will feature a presentation given by EM2024 Science PI Juan Carlos Martinez Oliveros from UC Berkeley. Here is a brief list of what Dr. Oliveros will discuss:

• Collecting the EM2017 data
• What we have done previously with the EM2017 data
• What we are now doing with the 2017 data
• What we plan to do with the 2024 data

We hope to see you there!

Written by Hannah Hellman

When Laura Peticolas submitted the Eclipse Megamovie 2024 (EM2024) grant for funding in 2022, we proposed to give away 100 3-D printed equatorial mounts to ensure that we would receive high quality photographs of the Sun’s corona. For our project’s purposes, “high quality” means that we would be able to reliably identify transient plasma

Equatorial mounts can be prohibitively expensive, costing as much as $6,000. The EM2024 mount, however, costs approximately $50 to print and build, so the design and implementation of these mounts not only increases the likelihood of high-quality scientific data being generated for our project, it also creates an opportunity for community scientists to elevate their skills and experience in the field of astrophotography.

The first step in the design process was to modify the code on the microprocessor to adjust for photographing the sun rather than the stars, which most astral photography software is based on. The DIY Equatorial Mount plans and instructions that inspired EM2024’s design by was meant to photograph stars and other astrophotography, not necessarily the Sun. The tracking of the sun is a little different than tracking of the stars for various reasons, but it is incredibly important to differentiate so that we can get the clearest images possible.

Three 3-D printers at Sonoma State University, one Ultimaker in the EdEon headquarters and two in the SSU Makerspace, ran basically non-stop for a little over one and a half months. The printing went on for more than 300 hours and used about 13 1kg reels of PLA plastic. Assembly took longer, about three months, and included the help of EdEon student interns as well as other staff. Sabrina Blais and Christopher Bell helped solder and build parts of the mount (including the wiring harness), and Robert Martinez (EdEon Administrative Assistant) facilitated the building and boxing of mounts for shipment.

Jeffery built the first mount prototype once we were officially funded by NASA, and tested the mount, camera and tripod before moving forward with the Nighttime Imaging ‘N Astronomy (NINA) software. He successfully programmed the mount to track the sun, taking some great photographs as it went. The beauty of using the NINA software is that it allows our volunteers to simply click “go,” when totality begins. This allows them to experience totality Figure 4: One of the photographs of the sun taken during Jeffery’s testing of the mount. while also collecting professional quality, scientifically significant, photographs of the sun during a total solar eclipse.

With the EM2024 mounts built and ready to ship, our project has moved one step closer to being able to learn more about solar plasma transients. Want to learn more about solar plasma transients? Stay tuned for our next post!

In this article, Dr. James Riordan discusses several different citizen science projects in which citizen scientists can participate during the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. Megamovie is featured there, as well as Soundscapes and SunSketcher.

Written by Hannah Hellman

Photo credit: David Rogers / Solar Eclipse, Richmond / CC BY-SA 2.0

On June 19th, 1927, Virginia Woolf traveled more than 219 miles, from London to North Yorkshire, to see a total solar eclipse. In her essay, “The Sun and the Fish,” written in 1928 (one year after her experience), she refers to this eclipse as, simply, “the dawn.” In that essay she marvels at the sense of unity and purpose that she shared with everyone else who traveled through the night on trains scheduled specifically for this celestial event:

Never was there a stranger purpose than that which brought us together that June night in Euston Railway Station. We were come to see the dawn. Trains like ours were starting all over England at the very moment to see the dawn. All noses were pointing north…There was no sleep, no fixity in England that night. All were on the roads; all were traveling north. All were thinking of the dawn.

This total solar eclipse was the first in 200 years to be visible in Britain, and as Woolf notes in her diary entry dated June 30th, 1927, it would be the last until 1999. She writes of the anxiety present in herself and observable in everyone around her, moving between staring at the sky and looking for any sign of change and staring at each other, anticipation building. Thoughts crossed her mind then just as they would for anyone experiencing a total solar eclipse today: would the clouds break? Did she remember to bring her smoked glass so that she could safely look at the sun before and after totality? Would they be able to see stars during totality?

Paired skillfully with her descriptions of the beauty and wonder of the scene before her, as the moon began to move in front of the sun and create that beautiful crescent shape, Woolf describes the ancient feelings the eclipse summoned from within:

I thought how we were like very old people, in the birth of the world—druids on Stonehenge: (this idea came more vividly in the first pale light though;) At the back of us were great blue spaces in the clouds. These were still blue. But now the colour was going out. The clouds were turning pale; a reddish black colour. Down in the valley it was an extraordinary scrumble of red & black; there was the one light burning; all was cloud down there, & very beautiful, so delicately tinted. Nothing could be seen through the cloud. The 24 seconds were passing.

And so, totality had begun. On totality, and the darkness, Woolf writes: “How can I express the darkness? It was a sudden plunge, when one did not expect it: being at the mercy of the sky: our own nobility: the druids; Stonehenge.” This was the moment of death. In the diary she later revisits and describes this sense of death, leading to a rebirth:

In her essay, “The Sun and the Fish,” Woolf discusses memory, and the effect of emotions on how well memory seems to work. She suggests that “[A] sight will only survive in the queer pool in which we deposit our memories if it has the good luck to ally itself with some other emotion by which it is preserved. Sights marry, incongruously, morganatically… and so keep each other alive.” It is an equivalent exchange, and one that is mutually beneficial for both emotion and memory.

To experience a total solar eclipse is to experience wonder itself, and it is an experience that will stay with you for a very long time.

Woolf, V. (1950). The Sun and the Fish. In The captain’s death bed: And other essays. essay, The Hogarth Press.
Woolf, V., Grindea, M., & Bell, A. O. (1982). The diary of Virginia Woolf: Volume iii: 1925-30. Penguin.

NASA’s Eclipse Megamovie project is back for the 2024 total solar eclipse—and is seeking volunteers! During the four minutes of this solar experience, the sun’s atmosphere, or corona, will become visible. It’s a rare time when we are able to take photographs of the corona from Earth on a large scale.

Five years after partnering with Google and inspiring citizen scientists to journey out to view the Great American total solar eclipse, the Eclipse Megamovie 2024 (EM2024) team has been funded by NASA to bring high-quality DSLR imagery to the forefront of solar coronal studies.

Sonoma State graduate Alex Vasquez, an autistic STEM student who was also a key inspiration for the N3 program, won a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship – becoming only the second SSU physics graduate in the Department’s history to receive that prestigious award.

During the Summer of 2022, OCEANOS teamed up with the NASA Neurodiversity Network (N3) to provide support and mentorship to a student intern in Puerto Rico. N3 provides a pathway to NASA participation and STEM employment for neurodiverse learners, with a focus on those on the autism spectrum.

From August 8-12, 2022, NYSCI hosted a camp for five autistic middle-school students to introduce them to rocket science through a combination of hands-on activities and a longer culminating project.

Check out the video showcasing NASA’s Neurodiversity Network Year 1 accomplishments!