From left, Maddie Mas, Maya Rogers, (on shoulders are Isabelle Crooker, Beth Short), LAHS Science Teacher Steph Miller and husband/volunteer Mark Mitchell, Prescott More, Elijah Pelofske, School Board Member/Volunteer Steve Boerigter, Stephen Gulley and Jack Benner. LAHS Science teacher/trip coordinator Deborah Grothaus isn’t on the trip due to prior commitments. Courtesy photo
LAHS News:
Eight Los Alamos High School students left Friday, to travel to Wyoming as part of the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse Experiment.
The students are traveling with LAHS Science teacher Steph Miller and her husband Mark Miller, along with School Board Member Steve Boerigter. Once the group reaches Wyoming, they will join their lead scientist, Dr. Galen Gisler of Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a team of volunteers from PEEC including Jonathan Creel and Siobhan Niklasson, Dr. Gisler’s wife Susan Gisler and parent volunteer’s Patrick Moore and Eric Mas.
The group will cover the eclipse as a citizen science team where observers will be positioned at regular intervals, such that as the shadow of the Moon leaves one observer, it will fall on the next one to the east. In this way, Citizen CATE establishes a “relay race” of coronal observations, with one group of observers passing the baton to the next group every 2 minutes or so.
As written on the CATE web site, “For the Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (CATE) Experiment, scientists, students and volunteers will track the Sun using 68 identical telescopes, software and instrument packages spaced along the 2,500 mile path of totality. Each site will produce more than 1,000 images. This celestial event will begin with a partial solar eclipse and culminate in about 2 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 90 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.”
To read more about what the students will be doing and the CATE Solar Eclipse Experiment, visit https:////eclipse2017.nso.edu/citizen-cate/.