Aurorasaurus: A citizen science platform for viewing and reporting the aurora

Abstract

A new, citizen science‐based, aurora observing and reporting platform has been developed with the primary aim of collecting auroral observations made by the general public to further improve the modeling of the aurora. In addition, the real‐time ability of this platform facilitates the combination of citizen science observations with auroral oval models to improve auroral visibility nowcasting. Aurorasaurus provides easily understandable aurora information, basic gamification, and real‐time location‐based notification of verified aurora activity to engage citizen scientists. The Aurorasaurus project is one of only a handful of space weather citizen science projects and can provide useful results for the space weather and citizen science communities. Early results are promising with over 2000 registered users submitting over 1000 aurora observations and verifying over 1700 aurora sightings posted on Twitter.

Identifying STEVE's Magnetospheric Driver Using Conjugate Observations in the Magnetosphere and on the Ground

“…A distinctive emission feature, strong thermal emission velocity enhancement (STEVE), was reported by the scientific community (MacDonald et al, ) with the help of citizen scientists via Aurorasaurus (MacDonald et al, ). It occurs in the subauroral region equatorward of the auroral oval, and it is narrow in latitude and wide in longitude.…”

AuroraWatch UK: An Automated Aurora Alert System

“…With its long history of recording localized geomagnetic disturbances, it can also be used for scientific study and for global real‐time geomagnetic monitoring (Love & Finn, ). For example, future studies will be undertaken to compare the AWUK data with citizen science observations of the aurora to determine the accuracy of our alerts levels (e.g., Harrison, ; Lockwood & Barnard, ; MacDonald et al, ; McBeath, ).…”

A real‐time hybrid aurora alert system: Combining citizen science reports with an auroral oval model

“…Positive reports (an example of which is shown in Figure ) include sightings submitted directly to the project, either through its website or mobile apps, and sightings found on Twitter [ Case et al , ] which have then been verified by Aurorasaurus users as true real‐time sightings of the aurora (known as “verified tweets” [ MacDonald et al , ]).…”

“…The Aurorasaurus citizen science project [ MacDonald et al , ] is designed primarily to collect reports of the aurora (both the northern and southern lights) to improve auroral modeling, to foster understanding of the aurora by the public, and to generate aurora visibility alerts. The broader aims and scopes of the project are discussed in detail in MacDonald et al [], but in the following, we focus only upon the particular aspect of generating alerts of auroral visibility.…”

“…To attempt to overcome these shortcomings, and to provide more accurate alerts of auroral visibility to Aurorasaurus users, we have developed a hybrid alert system that combines data from the well‐used OVATION Prime auroral oval model (OP10) [ Newell et al , ] with real‐time auroral reports provided by a community of citizen scientists [ MacDonald et al , ]. While combining models and real observations to provide more accurate predictions has been attempted in other fields, e.g., the SKYWARN program run by the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) [ Waxberg , ], this is the first time it has been used to predict (or “nowcast”) auroral visibility in real time.…”