Dr. Elizabeth MacDonald Introduces Heliophysics Big Year at the Citizen Science Association’s C*Sci 2023 Conference
Dr. Elizabeth MacDonald Introduces Heliophysics Big Year at the Citizen Science Association’s C*Sci 2023 Conference
Dr. Elizabeth MacDonald, a program scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the P.I. of the Aurorasaurus project supported by the New Mexico Consortium, recently attended the Citizen Science Association’s C*Sci 2023 conference where she introduced Heliophysics Big Year (HBY).
Hundreds of attendees from around the world attended this conference, which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) from May 22-26, 2023, to exchange knowledge and help shape and advance opportunities to engage the public in scientific research.
Dr. Liz MacDonald and Vincent Ledvina, a former Aurorasaurus intern (with NMC) and current Aurorasaurus Ambassador and graduate student.What is the Aurorasaurus project? Aurorasaurus is a citizen science project that tracks auroras around the world through people submitting reports on their website and social media. All aurora-related tweets and reports are placed on the Aurorasaurus.org map, and participants are then asked to log in and verify the tweets or reports.
At this conference, Dr. MacDonald introduced her latest citizen science interest: Heliophysics Big Year (HBY), a global celebration of the Sun’s influence on Earth and the entire Solar System. In addition to monthly events, HBY will help you prepare to view two North American solar eclipses on October 14, 2023 and April 8, 2024.
Dr. MacDonald hosted 40 people in a roundtable discussion focused on the HBY! Attendees included those who were completely new to the HBY program with jobs that were unrelated to space (biology, architecture, etc.), to NASA folks who do this kind of work on a daily basis, and everyone in-between.
If you are excited about Heliophysics Big Year and the upcoming solar eclipses coming up, Find eclipse-related citizen science projects at SciStarter.org/Eclipse, including those supported by NASA.
To read more about the C*Sci 2023 conference.and detailed information on all the participants, see Roland Moundalak’s SciStarter blog: C*Sci 2023 – Reports From the Field!
Top image caption: Dr. MacDonald presenting at the Citizen Science Association’s C*Sci 2023 Conference