A group of University of Rochester students are working on a NASA-funded science experiment to capture images of the Sun during the total solar eclipse on Monday.
The three students are one of about 35 teams of trained volunteers who will capture video of the Sun during the event using high-powered telescopes and polarized lenses.
The goal of the experiment, called the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) 2024, is to study structures and changes in the Sun’s outer layers, the chromosphere and the corona, which are visible during a total eclipse. It's led by Amir Caspi of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.
The images that first year students Asad Shahab, Adam Bowen and Michael Koomson will capture will be compiled with videos taken by other teams across North America into an hour-long movie for scientists to study.
The Sun, a yellow dwarf star estimated to be 4.6 billion years old, goes through cycles. It is currently in a solar maximum phase, which is a time that NASA describes as “when the magnetic field is more like a tangled hairball.”
During solar maximum, there is greater activity of solar winds, sunspots, and solar flares. There is also the possibility of witnessing prominences, which look like enormous loops peeling off the Sun.
"Comprised of electrically charged hydrogen and helium,” NASA states, "the prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun’s internal dynamo.”
During the 2017 total solar eclipse, the Sun was in a solar minimum phase and less wild.
This year, Shahab, Bowen, and Koomson will help scientists uncover more of the Sun's mysteries.
What follows is the transcript of a story aired on WXXI.
ASAD SHAHAB: Hi, I'm Asad Shahab, first year at University of Rochester, trying to get a telescope set up for the Eclipse.
NOELLE EVANS: Where did this come from?
SHAHAB: So, this is all sponsored by NASA and the Southwest Research Institution (sic). These are one of the 35 telescopes sets which will be with teams across the U.S. trying to get images of the Sun. The Sun's activity is increasing and increasing, compared to the last major solar eclipse that happened in 2017 where the Sun was at its minimum.
ADAM BOWEN: Hi, my name is Adam. I'm from England. I'm a freshman at the University of Rochester. The entire kind of purpose from NASA here was just to compare data from the solar maximum to the solar minimum, really. And I think just that contrast in data, which is something that's amazing to be part of, knowing that we're going to be contributing to research in this field, is something we're all very proud of, and very humbled to be a part of for sure.
MICHAEL KOOMSON: My name is Michael Koomson, I'm a first year at the University of Rochester. I'm a computer science major. Doing something like this maybe will make me more interested in having a career at NASA potentially. Who knows, maybe I can be a programmer for them.
EVANS: So, I'd take it for everybody here, like, your family back home is not going to be in the path of totality.
ALL: Right. No.
EVANS: When you're talking to them about this, like, what are some of those conversations like?
KOOMSON: My dad, he thought I’d be, like, messing around with computers and things of that sort. So yeah, doing something as monumental as this, it's pretty crazy.
EVANS: How high at the stakes?
SHAHAB: I mean, when you get data for NASA, you can’t — we can't just miss out.
EVANS: Well, this looks, I mean, maybe it's not set up yet. I'm like, ‘this looks different from a telescope I've usually seen,’ and that's because it's not all put together yet. (laughs) Sorry.
BOWEN: Very nearly, just the wiring left to do.
SHAHAB: Hopefully, once these clouds get out of the way, we'll be able to look at the Sun through the eyepiece.
EVANS: With just the Sun being, you know, naked as it is right now, can you see anything with this telescope?
SHAHAB: Yes, you can see the solar disk. And in last week's observation, there were a few very big sunspots in the middle of the Sun. The size of those are huge. They look extremely small, they’re like, their diameters are probably multiple Earths.
EVANS: What's it feel like when you see something like that?
SHAHAB: It Just shows how insignificant you are in this universe. It's essentially what's keeping us all alive and you’re just looking at through a telescope.
EVANS (laughs) Just taking in how little you matter.
SHAHAB: Yep.
BOWEN: (laughs) That was so cringe. (laughs) The insignificance realization. I don't know, we're all friends. We can all joke about these kinds of things. It's why we're such a good team. Plus, we all come from different backgrounds as well. So, we all have our own stories, our own ‘aha’ moments of when we've fallen in love with astronomy in our own ways.
EVANS: What was your ‘aha’ moment?
SHAHAB: Yeah, I've been doing astrophotography for a few years now. I used to have a telescope back home.
EVANS: When you say back home, where's back home?
SHAHAB: Pakistan. It all started with my mother. She’s into astronomy a lot. I remember first, nights out in the north under the mountains, clear skies, looking at the stars, the Milky Way rising, and it all clicked. And here I am with another telescope in the U.S.
BOWEN: Because those feelings for us were so strong, we often think about ‘what if someone else who stood where I once was had a similar experience and how magical that would be for them.’ You don't even have to be in the path of totality, just such an event occurring is such an opportunity for falling in love with science.
