Amateur astronomers to shed light on solar storms

By Ben on March 2, 2010 at 2:04 pm | In Blog Posts | No Comments

more armchair astronomy work for the internet masses.
–Ben

Amateur astronomers to shed light on solar storms

“…Becoming a solar storm tracker involves setting up a ‘Zooniverse account,’ logging into the Solar Stormwatch site at http://solarstormwatch.com and completing a short interactive training programme. Almost anyone can help the project says Dr Davis. “Many motivated individuals will always be able to scrutinise the data far more carefully than small dedicated science teams ever could. Contributing will enable more information to be gleaned from the data than would otherwise be possible.”

The site requires members to study video footage and photographs to identify past solar storms, described as big lightbulb-shaped explosions. Then they may be asked to look at data of real-time space-weather conditions. Dr Davis says, “the real-time data is less detailed but potentially provides a means of making true predictions about any solar storms heading towards Earth.” …

http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1003/02solar/