Citizen CATE

The Citizen CATE (Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse) Experiment is a project which captured images of the inner solar corona using a network of more than 35 telescopes operated by citizen scientists, high school groups and universities. CATE is currently a joint project involving volunteers from more than 20 high schools, 20 universities, informal education groups, astronomy clubs across the country, 5 national science research labs and 5 corporate sponsors. The goal of CATE was to produce a scientifically unique data set: high-resolution, rapid cadence white light images of the inner corona for 60 minutes.

For the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) Experiment 2024, scientists, students and volunteers tracked the Sun using 35 identical telescopes, software and instrument packages spaced along the 1,000 mile path of totality. Each site produced more than 1,000 HDR images. This celestial event will begin with a partial solar eclipse and culminate in about 4 minutes of totality. As the Moon’s shadow passes from west to east, each telescope in the Citizen CATE constellation will be ready to take up the observation as the shadow appears on the horizon. The resulting dataset will consist of an unprecedented 60 minutes of continuous, high-resolution, and rapid-cadence images detailing the Sun’s inner corona – a region of the solar atmosphere typically very challenging to image.  Each image had polarization data with four orientations, so scientists are now unfolding the three-dimensional structure of the corona. Although clouds plagued the southwest, many of the sites got good data which is now being analyzed.

Dr. Reiff was the regional coordinator for the southwest US (Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas) and helped enlist volunteers both as "state coordinators" and as observing teams, to observe from specific locations along the center line for maximum coverage.

A video of the project "Gathered in Darkness" about CATE and its early results has been released by SWRI and NSF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zbZnZOW0Rw.

LINKS

• Citizen CATE 2024
• "Gathered in Darkness" Video
• Citizen CATE at The National Solar Observatory
• Eclipses & Citizen Science - NASA Citizen Science Project

RESULTS

This image was taken by the “Citizen CATE” team 7, using quick-look color coding.  The image is color-coded by the polarization of the light from the corona.  Since the light is polarized perpendicular to the local magnetic field and the field is nearly radial, the colors across the sun from each other are nearly the same.  (The detailed differences will tell us about the Sun’s corona!) The science team will be collating all the CATE images to reveal the corona's changes as the shadow passed across the US.

This image was taken by the “Citizen CATE” team 15. As they were imaging the corona, they were "photobombed" by a hang-glider. It would be fun to see their video!!