Collaborative Research: Citizen CATE Next-Generation 2024 Total Solar Eclipse Experiment, Phase 2

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This is a collaborative project between the SouthWest Research Institute, and two of NSF’s Federally Funded Research and Development Centers – the National Solar Observatory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In August of 2017, the Great American Eclipse traversed the continental United States from Oregon to South Carolina. The Citizen Continental-America Telescopic Eclipse (Citizen CATE) successfully deployed over 300 volunteer citizen scientists at 68 sites to continuously observe totality from coast to coast. That effort resulted in a novel and unique dataset containing 90 minutes of continuous coverage of the inner solar corona. On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse (TSE) will again traverse United States, this time from Texas to Maine. The project outlined here is to build on the successes of CATE 2017 and improve the observations with upgraded instrumentation to better observe the middle layer of the solar atmosphere (the middle corona). CATE 2024 project will deploy 40 teams of citizen scientists along the path of totality to collect over 60 minutes of high-resolution data which will be used to study several outstanding problems in the hard to observe middle corona. A previous planning work including site selection, identification of necessary equipment, and initial development of the citizen science network as already been carried out. This award is to carry out the planned activities, which includes equipment purchase and telescope building, coordination and training for the teams, data collection during the eclipse and preliminary compilation of the data. The broader impacts include engagement with Native American and other underrepresented community groups along the eclipse path, the donation of telescopes to the community groups for use in other astronomical observations, and the inclusion of an early career female scientist as the project manager. CATE 2024 will use high-cadence high dynamic range (HDR) polarimetric observations of the corona to characterize the physical processes that shape the heating, structure, and evolution of the solar corona at scales that cannot be studied outside of a TSE. The science objectives of CATE 2024 are to (1) determine the connectivity of structures that span the middle corona, where the coronal magnetic field transitions from primarily closed to primarily open; (2) measure the flow of the nascent solar wind, by characterizing small scale dynamics that occur during the eclipse; and (3) identify and characterize magnetic reconnection, which is believed to generate structure in the solar wind and to heat the low and middle corona, by identifying features and dynamics related to this process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.