SIU team to travel to Australia to study eclipse, prepare for 2024 event at home

CARBONDALE, Ill. – It will get dark later this month, and Southern Illinois University Carbondale faculty, staff and students will be on site to study the moon’s eclipse of the sun, leading up to the 2024 total solar eclipse. Eclipse back home.

The research team and student study abroad teams will travel to Australia next week to prepare for the solar eclipse on April 20. SIU staff plan to monitor the event from Perth’s northern peninsula in Exmouth. Corey Breivik, professor of physics and applied physics at the School of Physics and Applied Physics, says the total eclipse is there. Most of the western region of the country will experience a partial eclipse.

Breivik and Harvey Henson, director of SIU’s STEM Education Research Center, will travel with eight foreign students, leaving April 13. The group will also visit Shark Bay, Coral Bay, Carnarvon and Perth, she said.

Bob Beyer, a specialist in the School of Physics and Applied Physics, will lead a four-person team of researchers on April 11. The two-student team will conduct public awareness and night-watching events before the eclipse.

Most of the team will leave Perth on April 22nd, returning to the US on April 23rd.

Expensive experience

Baier said the trip could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for some students, who will gain valuable, hands-on training and knowledge about introductory astronomy along the way. The experience will allow them to participate in coronavirus data collection during the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse over southern Illinois.

“The experience of the eclipse is something that few receive in a lifetime, and these students have the opportunity to do that twice,” Beyer said. “Once Upon a Time in Australia and the Coming Total Solar Eclipse in America”.

SIU faculty train students for the trip, during which they will test key imaging processes and platforms for the Dynamic Eclipse Broadcast (DEB) initiative and the Lunt Solar Systems multi-wavelength telescope feeds. Both projects will collect scientific data and provide telescope feeds for the NASA EDGE programming produced in collaboration with WSIU and SIU on the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse and the October 14, 2023, annual solar eclipse, which is during the lunar eclipse. It passes between the Sun and Earth at the near or far end of its orbit and does not completely cover the Sun, Beyer said.

Back up to the students and researchers who were on campus during the 2017 total solar eclipse in 2017 and will be there again in 2024, the mobile Lunt SunLab provides backup, geographically-distinct images to the mobile Lunt SunLab. The stunning, high-resolution color images of the Sun show partial and total phases of eclipses, and are among the best images available from ground-based telescopes, Beyer said.

The country of scientists

The DEB initiative is a national citizen science project led by SIU to conduct corona research using volunteer observation groups across North America. Bayer and his team will test the DEB imaging setup in Australia. The test provides important feedback for the imaging and training processes the students are helping to develop, Beyer said.

“This trip is critical to ensuring we are ready for the scientific and outreach components of our solar observations in North America and at SIU,” Bayer said. “It will expand our pool of experienced solar and nocturnal astronomers who will help support the broad outreach efforts we have planned at SIU.”

Study abroad… and more

Prior to the April 20 event, study abroad students will examine stromatolites in Shark Bay, the oldest living organisms on Earth, and visit Coral Bay on a glass-bottom boat tour. The tour includes snorkeling and views of coral reefs and turtles, hiking outdoors, seeing new animals and watching the skies of the Southern Hemisphere, Breivik said.

The students will be helping out with evening public astronomy sessions in Carnarvon and Bullara ahead of the eclipse, she said. They participate in research observations, as well as liaise with Western Australian Astrotourism.

But the day of the eclipse is the biggest profit. The students not only observe the eclipse, but also help collect scientific data. According to Breivik, they will meet with the general public and help answer questions about the event.

Breivik said the trip was an important dress rehearsal for SIU 2024.

“On that day, the eclipse will only last for about 4 and a half minutes. “There is little time to collect data and all the equipment must work properly,” said Breivik. “This trip will give us the opportunity to practice collecting data during an eclipse and avoid any equipment challenges.”